What is the "Messanger Service" in Win2k

I've been using the same copy of Windows 2000 on my home computer for year and a half. For past 6 months. Everytime I reinstall a fresh copy I get pop-ups that look like dialog boxes w/ advertisments on them and I need to click 'OK' for them to go away. It's supposed to be some kind of "Messanger Service". Can anyone tell me how to disable it. It's really anoying especially when it freezes program that runs in the whole screen (e.i. game). The interesting question that I'd like to know is why did it started only 6 months ago. Do you think that Microsoft put this service there not telling anybody just to use it later???

These are simply net send commands. To prevent them from happening, go to Start -> Run -> "services.msc" . Then look for Windows Messenger Service and disable (or stop) it. If you stop it, make sure that the startup type is manual and not automatic. The reason these started only 6 months ago, is that XP has the messenger service and XP is more mainstream than 2K. This doesn't work on win9x comps.
Cheers,
cgkanchi

The Messenger Service has been around a long time. It is used for network adminsitration and monitoring and for devices to talk to each other.

The reason the pop-ups started is that spammers found a new avenue. Email spam gets blocked and nobody looks at web pop-up ads so they discovered that many firewalls allowed Messenger Service traffic through and that by broadcasting a message using the Messenger Service they could hit computers directly with an official looking message rather than waiting for you to check your email or surf the web.

You can disable it by right-clicking on My Computer on the desktop and select Manage. Expand the Service and Applications tree in the left pane and select Services. Locate the service called Messenger and right-click it to go into its Properties. Change the startup type to Disabled.

From now on the service won't be able to start. You can also stop the service by right-clicking on it.

Hope that helps-

Thats a messenger service that is most windows computers. It allows messages to be sent by knowing the ip address of computers. To disable it in Windows 2000 go to start-->Programs--> Administrative tools--> services. Scroll down till you seee the messenger. Rightl click the highlighted line and choose properties then click stop.
Also select disable or manual in the startup type scroll bar then click ok.

I found this information here at http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/...-mess-serv.txt