I thought I had this covered in one of my tips. Actually, I told you indirectly about how to uninstall
MSN messenger and also how to stop from loading it at boot time. But recently I saw few mails/posts
where people want to keep the MSN messenger , but do not want it to run whenever Outlook Express is
executed.
For these folks here are a couple of solution. There is a Microsoft knowledgebase article on this as
well. Visit How to Prevent Windows Messenger from Running on a Windows XP-Based Computer
(Q302089) and learn more.
In regedit, navigate to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft]. Create a new key
by the name "Messenger" and then within that another key by the name "Client". This is equivalent to
creating and navigation to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client]. Within this create a
DWORD key by the name "PreventRun" and set its value to 1. Quit registry and even though not a
must, its a good idea to reboot.
One more way of doing the same without sacrificing run time is to go to C:\Program Files and
rename Messenger directory to something else e.g. MessengerOff. This works as well.
