Home » Performance, Tutorials

How To: Remove Windows Messenger

19 September 2008 907 views 4 Comments



Windows XP’s built in Windows Messenger can be quite a nuiscance for those 99% of us that use Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) or any other instant messaging program instead of it.

To be honest, I don’t even really know why it even exists. Why does Microsoft need two free messenger programs, one much better than the other?

Anyway, here is how to remove Windows Messenger from your XP and save some valuable disk space.

Step 1: Navigate to C:\WINDOWS\inf and look for the file named sysoc.inf (NOT sysoc.PNF !), Copy it to a secure location on the hard drive to back it up. Remember to always back up befor making any tweaks or mofifications to Windows.

Step 2: Now we get to the diry work. Open sysoc.inf an look for the following line in the [Components] section:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,hide,7

Remove “hide” so that the commas sit next to one another. This is what it should look like now:

msmsgs=msgrocm.dll,OcEntry,msmsgs.inf,,7

And you’re done editing! Save the file and quit.

Step 3: Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Add / Remove Windows Components and you should see “Windows Messenger” on the list. Check the box next to it to remove it.

Note: you can remove other Windows programs the same way, but as always, only at your own risk.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ... Loading ...

4 Comments »

  • avansare said:

    Thanks! For a long time wished to remove it

    avansare´s last blog post..A New Argentina

  • Raju said:

    I wish this kinda tip is there for all MS packaged utilities in XP and Vista ;)

  • download-msn.ch said:

    thanks. now i can remove windows messenger – i never used it

  • School Proxy Blog said:

    I removed Windows messenger from Components Wizard but it was still running if I opened Outlook Express.
    So I went to C:\Program Files and removed the ‘Messenger’ directory completely. Outlook Express is running alone from that time. Thus I got rid of Messenger completely.

Leave your response!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get your own globally-recognized-avatar, please register at Gravatar.

CommentLuv Enabled