getting rid of messenger service

[Reb]

I just changed cable service, and now there is this
annoying fake messenger service box that pops up about 15
minutes afer restarting my computer. The messenger service
tells me to go to a bogus Microsoft website at
www.windowspatch.info to download a patch to a due to a
buffer overload. I certainly haven't downloaded anything,
but the problem is that the only way to kill this messenger
box is to restart the machine. I can't kill it through
task manager, and I can't do anything on the machine once
it pops up because there is no way to mak eit go into the
background. Its really annoying. Has anyone else heard of
this?

 

[Guest]

Go to www.grc.com and click on Kill the Messenger. Gibson Research is a great site for scanning your computer for security holes as well. Do a Shields Up scan and see if your firewall is working.

good luck

david

----- Reb wrote: -----

I just changed cable service, and now there is this
annoying fake messenger service box that pops up about 15
minutes afer restarting my computer. The messenger service
tells me to go to a bogus Microsoft website at
www.windowspatch.info to download a patch to a due to a
buffer overload. I certainly haven't downloaded anything,
but the problem is that the only way to kill this messenger
box is to restart the machine. I can't kill it through
task manager, and I can't do anything on the machine once
it pops up because there is no way to mak eit go into the
background. Its really annoying. Has anyone else heard of
this?

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

That's a bandaid - a bad idea. It merely camoflauges the real problem, which
is that the computer has ports open from the Internet.... the right answer
is to install a firewall to block the ports. Either a software or a hardware
firewall will do....