link back to the other thread Windows Live Messenger Please keep things to one post it is very frustrating to try to keep up with what is being done and responded to when we have to try to find all the various threads.

Calpat: My experience has been terrible when I tried to remove Messenger in the past. With all the alarms that went off you would think I was stealing gold from Fort Knox not getting rid of an intrusive program that I didn't want. I have had great success with End It All to turn off unwanted running background processes while I play games...well Morrowind, a game. After IE7, about all it turned off was the Toshiba pinger. All the processes are now "protected". The security alert background processes. Everything is running now. Its such a pain. I used to be able to "end process" for messenger and a lot of Window stuff...no more. I uninstalled "End it All" because it no longer ended or "killed" anything but the pinger. I think I'm going to have the same problem as you. I don't think you made a mistake. That might be what happens now. I'm scared of it. I tried to remove a fax background process,a long time ago, through MSCONFIG and my computer sounded like a fire drill at an elementary school. mikie ... I'm going to try to look into this anyway. I just hate having to carry messenger because I don't use it, and I won't use it. I don't think it can be removed anymore than I can "end process" for it during a game session like I used to. But you know that I am usually wrong...so I will give a look see... marf

zep, you got off free and clear, not I, not the first time probably won't be the last. Oh well can't please them all. LOL and yes I do have resources to back it up. Help! My computer is slow! a highly regarded MVP posts about registry cleaner use. Mark Russinovich (Author of the "Bible", Windows Internals, co-founder of Winternals and Sysinternals, and since both companies were bought by Microsoft, now a senior Microsoft employee) "I haven't and never will implement a Registry cleaner since it's of little practical use on anything other than Win2K terminal servers and developing one that's both safe and effective requires a huge amount of application-specific knowledge. Will using Registry Cleaners speed-up my system and make it more reliable? It will have no effect on system speed. There is an excellent chance it will make your system less reliable." And the extremely well know Fred Langa Are software registry cleaners of any use? Fred Langa started with a standard PC, imaged it, and ran 10 registry cleaners. He ran each three times on an image: Highest number of items that needed to be "fixed": 800 Lowest number of items found to be "fixed": 59 "Does not this suggest that what needs to be fixed is not at all certain? The other question it invites is it not possible that those generating a large number of entries are trying to sell snake oil? " And from Bill Castner MS MVP who works on many of the support forums. "Summary of Registry Cleaner Software: Do not bother with this. It it unlikely to help, it can cause harm. There are no end-user benefits from running registry cleaners. Unnecessary entries in the registry do no harm. This should not be a regular maintenance chore. It most certainly if done should not be automated. I hold to the singular distinction I made in the beginning: there are times that a fast registry editor with search is needed to fix a single issue under Expert hands. There is no justification for the regular use of automated registry cleaning tools; and as the results above show, they are of dubious merit as the "fix" for even one-off problems that need solving." Bill Castner MS-MVP, Aumha VSOP & Moderator I could certainly go on for quite some time quoting from each of the support forums, but I won't bother. As DA so wisely stated "The problem is here at the forum we have members of various levels of inexperience who at times overly rely on a member's suggestion or from readings elsewhere." That is precisely why at help forums you MUST be extremely cautious what is suggested, and every support forum I work on goes by the statement that Bill Castner made above. If someone knowingly choses to use such a program they take that risk upon them selves which is fine if they are knowingly entering into it and know the risks involved.

on the bottom right, to the left of the clock Sometimes they' hide the icon if you havent used them and then on the left of that group of icons is a left pointer,, click that and then all will display, for a moment. Which messenger ? Most of them will have a checkbox in configurations to Start with windows. I assume you want to uncheck that. If you just want to uninstall it,, go to control panel add/remove programs, or Programs and Features in vista,,, and uninstall it.