POP up messages

Since moving to Microsoft XP I am being inundated with pop up messages asking me to subscribe to a site that will stop them. I've heard that you can easily disable the pop up messages feature in XP.
Anyone know how to do it???

many thanks in advance.

AndyT

Andy,

The b******s that do that are a real pain. You need to turn of the Windows messenger service. This is intended for network messages (switching this off won't affect MSN Messenger if you use it).

The following works for Windows 2000 or XP:
-Click Start button on your Windows taskbar.
-Click Run...
-Enter "Services.msc" (without quotation marks) and click OK.
-Browse the list till you find "Messenger" in Name column.
Double click it. The Messenger Properties (Local Computer) dialog
box comes up.
-Choose "Disable" in "Startup type" drop down box.
-Click OK.

That should be it!

2 free programs that will block popups and other nasties are:

Proxymitron http://www.proxomitron.info/ which I use and is great. It sits quietly as an icon by the clock and is easily disabled if you *want* to see a popup or visit a site that has some ActiveX or Java component that the web author insists that you experience if you want to see his site.

My housemate seems to like the Google Toolbar which also blocks popups. http://toolbar.google.com/ . Personally, toolbars annoy me as much as popups.

I use popup stopper (Free edition).
Blocks ALL popups, and gives a quick notification when something has been stopped.
If you want something to popup (like the photos in AUTOTRADER), just hit CTRL when you click the link.

Google toolbar is crap and rarely blocks anything.

Many thanks indeed....

Mr Barcode I have followed you instructions and will hopefully live in peace for a while. I installed Norton Internet Security when I bought my new PC and thought it was Peter himself on a nice little earner....??

Thanks to all who responded.

regards

AndyT