Help w/ Computer Problem

[jgunnip]

I'm at my mom's house and she's got some computer problems with "Messenger Service" Pop ups. It appears to be the work of some type of virus/adware/spyware. I'm run full system scans with both North AntiVirus and Ad-aware but the problem does not seem to be fixed.

Basically every few minutes a notive appears on the screen as a "Messenger Service"

The text of one as an example says.

"Message from SYSTEM to USER on 6/2/2005 9:45:50 PM

Warning Your computer may have critical errors in registry and file system."

This is also usually followed by more text, sometimes it says a bogus website like www.pcrepair.com, and gives steps to fixing the problem.

HAs anyone experience or heard of this type of problem before?

HEre's anothe example

"Message from MSOFT UPDATE to CUSTOMER on 6/2/2005 10:02:14 PM

Important Notice From MSOFT

Buffer Overflow in Messenger Service Cause Unexpected COmputer Shutdown, Virus Infection and Remote Code Execution

Affected Software:

Microsoft Windows NT Workstation
Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0
Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Win98
Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Non AFfected Software:

Microsoft Windows Millenium Edition

Your system IS affected download the patch from the address below !
FIRST TYPE THE URL INTO YOUR INTERNET BROWSER, THEN CLICK 'OK'

www.WUPDATE.NET"


and another....


"Message from SECURITY to ALERT on 6/2/2005 10:02:35 PM

STOP! WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION

Windows has found CRITICAL SYSTEM ERRORS

To fix the errors please do the following:
1. Download Registry Repair from: http://www.saferegfix.com
2. Install Registry Repair
3. Run REgistry Repair
4. Reboot your computer
FAILURE TO ACT NOW MAY LEAD TO DATA LOSS AND CORRUPTION!"

Like I said these messages pop up frequently. and help appreciated. thanks.




there's more but whatever it is it seems to shut down the computer which is happeneing now so i'll post this and continue again.

[Sooga]

It may be spyware, but the first thing you should do if you want to get rid of these messages is to disable the Messenger service by going to Start->Settings->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services, going down to where it says 'Messenger', and setting the status to Disabled.

[jgunnip]

Wow thanks! That was surprising easy enough. I really need to get more computer savy...

Disable the Help and Support service, too since it isn't all that much help in my opinion. There's really a bunch of services that you should normally disable if you are a typical PC user.