is this a virus

[fragmyster]

i have a friends computer ive been working on and he's got a very annoying pop-up that comes up every 30 secs. they look just like windows notification box but there advertising porn sites and drugs. when i tryed adaware and spy bot to see if they where spyware they did not show up and there not installed programs. i checked them in the task manager and there prosess is the csrss which is a critical windows process. so is it a virus.

[doctorgonzo]

That sounds like the Windows messenger service. Go to this site to learn how to disable it. You really don't need the messenger service running, especially if you aren't on a network.