Remove MSN Messenger…

Are you tired of seeing MSN Messenger pop up on your Windows XP system? As usual, in an effort to continue its course towards domination of everything, Microsoft has made it difficult to remove. But it is possible! The following method works in Windows XP Professional, but has not been tested on a system with SP1 installed. FYI, I’ve seen scripts that are similar to this, but fail miserably, automatically deleting other much-needed components! Better to do this slow and manually! As always, I am not responsible for the use or the misuse of this information; use at your own risk.

  1. Exit MSN Messenger by right-clicking the MSN icon in the notification area, and selecting Exit.
  2. Add the following registry entries, both with a DWORD value of 1:
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client\PreventRun
      • HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client\PreventAutoRun
      1. Open a command prompt by clicking Start/Run, then typing “command” and clicking OK.
      2. Uninstall MSN Messenger by typing
        rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %systemRoot%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove
      3. Uninstall the leftover installation information file by typing
        rundll32 setupapi,InstallHinfSection BLC.Remove 128 %systemRoot%\INF\msmsgs.inf
      4. Allow MSN Messenger to be displayed in the Add/Remove Windows Components dialog in the future (if it pops up again!) by typing notepad.exe %systemRoot%\INF\sysoc.inf and deleting the word “hide” from the line that starts with “msmsgs=”. It MAY be possible to skip to this step directly and perform the uninstallation directly from the Add/Remove Windows Components dialog, but that method MAY leave unwanted components and has not been thoroughly tested.
      5. Cross your fingers and reboot! You will probably get a message asking you to confirm the removal of some leftover files. Click OK.

      If you liked this, you might also be interested in:

      This rambling was posted on November 7, 2002
      and filed under Instruction Manual, Microsoft Products

      Responses

      38 Responses to “Remove MSN Messenger…”

      Pages:« 1 2 [3] 4 » Show All

      1. Response #21
        amirek (IP) on August 5th, 2003 at 5:26 am

        Here is an EASIER way to stop MSN Messenger from popping up! Just copy the command below, and paste in into your RUN box, then restart your computer. IT WORKS!!!!
        RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

      2. Response #22
        richard on August 5th, 2003 at 10:46 am

        That’s simply step #4 from my instructions above, but you need to complete all the steps to remove all traces of Messenger. - RDL

      3. Response #23
        Willis (IP) on August 13th, 2003 at 2:04 pm

        Can these steps be done on a Win98 machine?

      4. Response #24
        Pivik (IP) on August 19th, 2003 at 4:55 am

        Or, the simple thing to do would be to rename msmsgs.exe to msmsgs.bak. You will also want to go into the registry. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENTVERSION\RUN and delete the key that contains the line msmsgs.exe. Everything in the RUN section runs at startup. you can also do this to prevent it from loading without renaming the msmsgs.exe. And if you are getting it to pop up in your email programs IE> Outlook/Outlook Express. Make sure that you go into your options and tell it not to load messenger. Not very difficult at all.

      5. Response #25
        Craig David (IP) on September 26th, 2003 at 4:51 pm

        Thats proper bo i tells thee!!!

      6. Response #26
        Doomer (IP) on October 7th, 2003 at 12:14 pm

        Thanks a lot! \o/

      7. Response #27
        Raz (IP) on October 19th, 2003 at 6:37 pm

        I don’t know what to say except: God bless you man! Thanx!

      8. Response #28
        Overhorde (IP) on October 24th, 2003 at 8:22 am

        Dude… you’re my idol… Been looking for a clean delete of that retarded program

      9. Response #29
        Joan (IP) on October 24th, 2003 at 10:11 pm

        what if it is Windows 98? what must I do to remove the MSN Messenger completely?

      10. Response #30
        Michael (IP) on November 2nd, 2003 at 6:22 pm

        I have a NT4 machine that when messenger is removed and all registry keys are deleted actually comes up at start up with an error saying that the msmsgs.exe could not be found, Does this mean that I have missed an entry?

      Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 » Show All