It makes us annoying when the Windows Messenger automatically starts running as soon as the Windows XP starts running. Especially, if you do not like Windows Messenger, you definitely want to get rid of it.
In addition of annoyance, it makes the windows start-up process bit longer and starts eating up your memory usage in the background. So it’s better if you can prevent it from running at the windows startup. You can easily disable it using Group Policy editor.
Here’s how you can disable Windows Messenger from start-up:
- Go to Start menu and then open “Run”. (or hit Windows button + R)
- Type “gpedit.msc” without quotes and hit enter. This will start the Group Policy Object Editor
- On the left pane, under the “Computer Configuration”, navigate to Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Messenger.
- Now on the right pane, you can see two options. “Do not allow windows messenger to be run” and “Do not automatically start Windows Messenger initially”. Double click on these options and enable them and apply the changes and click OK.
This will now make Windows Messenger not to load during the windows start-up. End of annoyance!



Same thing can be done using msconfig utility also.
BTW, nice article.