msmsgs is eating up 98% of my CPU cycles

[cadlewv]

Hello. As of late, upon realizing that my system is unbearably slow, I've noticed via the task manager that msmsgs is sometimes eating up 98-99% of my CPU cycles. One time it was Norton AntiVirus, but every other time msmsgs.

What I've done:
I've run Ad-aware SE full scan and found only tracking cookies (deleted them).
I've run Spybot S&D and only found tracking cookies (deleted them).
I've run Windows Defender on full scan, pretty much the same.
I've run NAV full system scan and found no viruses.
I also use ZoneAlarm.

Any suggestions?

[Panama Red]

I would Disable msmsgs just because it's a path for exploitation by malware writers. I disable it on all customer machines and on my own too. Here's how:

Start>Run> type: services.msc>find Messenger>Double click on Messenger and change the Startup option to Disabled>Click Apply>Stop the service and exit all windows.

[Mesaeus]

msmsgs.exe is the executable of Windows Messenger. It has nothing to do with the Messenger service, but it's a good idea to stop that one too. To stop msmsgs.exe (it has nothing to do with MSN Messenger which is a different version with more bells and whistles), it's best to uninstall it by pasting the following line in Start/Run... and executing it :


RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\inf\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove


Why uninstall ? Because if you want to use an MS messenger, it's better to use MSN Messenger. Also, Windows Messenger gets started by a lot of microsoft programs, one of which is Outlook Express, making it near impossible to just prevent it from running without uninstalling.

[Panama Red]

I stand corrected. Thanx for the correct info, Mesaeus.