From Leo's mailbag:
> From: A Computer User
> Sent: August 18, 2005
> To: Ask Leo!
> Subject: unwanted popup notifications
>
> Leo,
> hi i just got a new hard drive and after installing windows
> and some programs that were on my older one i started getting
> theses pop up notifications. there are about 5 different
> ones in all and the either say i have "critical system
> errors" or "regestry problems" they also all tell me to go
> to different websited to fix my problem. the think is all
> the websites want me to buy something. so i thought
> spyware... i have adaware, spybot, and mcafee and none of
> them found anything. this is very strage and annoying
> because this is a brand new hard drive. also when i moved
> some things over from my older disk im pretty sure they were
> clean and not infected, because i never had a problem like
> this with my old disk.
If the messages all look the same color (probably grey) and
have simple OK or OK and Cancel buttons on them, I'd bet you're
seeing Messenger spam. Not Instant Messenger, but the Windows
Messenger Service.
That can be safely turned off, and this article has the instructions
in it:
http://ask-leo.com/whats_the_difference_between_msn_messenger_windows_messenger_and_windows_messenger.html
Thanks for asking,
Leo