August 05, 2005

Curious George: Adware? "Messenger Service" keeps poping up with an obvious adware.

It pops up and says a variation of "Danger your registry is corupt please vist www.fixregerror.com" I have run adaware, spybot, AVG antivirus and I run Sygate personal firewall, and none of these find anything wrong but it still pops up every 15 minutes or so. Anybody seen this before? Or have any more suggestions?

posted by Uncle 19 years ago
  • help
  • Your computer is not infected. Turn off Windows Messenger Service as explained in the help above. Microsoft has it enabled by default in Win2000, so you get rogue packets coming to your IP address that trigger it. Problem solved.
  • Thank you
  • I saw one of those popups on a Windows-powered advertising screen in a subway station in Tokyo. It made me laugh to see spam overlaying the glossy advertising message. /Totally Windows-free for over a year and beginning to forget the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that Windows is heir too.
  • I've seen GPF dialogs over a scrolling menu on a tvguide-like cable channel. Pretty funny.
  • Buy - a - Mac.
  • Or run Linux with WINE for those apps you absolutely have to have. Mac or Linux, solves lots of security issues.
  • Nonbinary, I'm as Linux/Unix-loving as anyone could be. But recommending the use of WINE? That's just cruel! Don't listen to him, Uncle. Linux has all the comparable software you could ever want. (Using Outlook? Evolution's got your back. Need Powerpoint/Word/Excel? Open Office has you covered. Quicken? GnuCash. Photoshop? The GIMP.) Barring that, get thyself a router and/or ZoneAlarm firewall. If someone's pinging you with Messenger spam, they're probably tickling your computer's secret spots, too, and not in a nice way.