Why am I receiving pop-up messages from the Windows Messenger service or NetSend?

Windows XP has a service called Messenger that allows messages to be sent one way to a computer. This service is useful for allowing administrators to send notices to individual computers, for example, to notify users who are connected to a server that it is going off line, or to notify a user that a print job has been printed.

Although having a firewall on a network or personal computer is a good security practice, it is not feasible to configure a firewall to block all the ports on which the messaging service listens without also disrupting networking functionality. Instead, an easy way to block unwanted Messenger service pop-ups is to disable Windows Messenger altogether.

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