How to Remove MSN Messenger

Are you tired of seeing MSN Messenger pop up on your Windows XP system? As usual, in an effort to continue its course towards domination of everything, Microsoft has made it difficult to remove. But it is possible! The following method works in Windows XP Professional, but has not been tested on a system with SP1 installed. FYI, I've seen scripts that are similar to this, but fail miserably, automatically deleting other much-needed components! Better to do this slow and manually! As always, I am not responsible for the use or the misuse of this information; use at your own risk.

Exit MSN Messenger by right-clicking the MSN icon in the notification area, and selecting Exit.
Add the following registry entries, both with a DWORD value of 1:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client\PreventRun
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Messenger\Client\PreventAutoRun

1. Open a command prompt by clicking Start/Run, then typing "command" and clicking OK.
2. Uninstall MSN Messenger by typing "rundll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %systemRoot%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove"
3. Uninstall the leftover installation information file by typing "rundll32 setupapi,InstallHinfSection BLC.Remove 128 %systemRoot%\INF\msmsgs.inf"
4. Allow MSN Messenger to be displayed in the Add/Remove Windows Components dialog in the future (if it pops up again!) by typing "notepad.exe %systemRoot%\INF\sysoc.inf" and deleting the word "hide" from the line that starts with "msmsgs=". It MAY be possible to skip to this step directly and perform the uninstallation directly from the Add/Remove Windows Components dialog, but that method MAY leave unwanted components and has not been thoroughly tested.
5. Reboot!

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