Registry Question

[meblumen]

I just inherited a laptop from a friend so I wanted to start new with it. Hence, I formatted the entire harddrive and installed WinXP pro. Right away after the installation was complete I hooked it up to the internet and all of a sudden I started getting these "Messanger Service" error messages about my registry being corrupted. I was under the impression that formatting the harddrive would completely erase any prior changes/errors to the old registry allowing me to start fresh. My question is, what do I need to do to fix the problem, do I need to do something to the registry, re-install windows or something else?

[doctorgonzo]

Was that an original Windows XP disc, or did it have SP2 included?

You really need to either A) be behind a firewall when you connect to the internet, or B) install SP2 before you connect to the internet, because you don't need to be connected for very long using a computer with plain old Windows XP before it will be infected with trojans. It only takes a few minutes.

[glc]

Control panel, administrative tools. Services, messenger - stop and disable. You are simply getting messenger spam. Messenger is not an essential service and is easily exploited in this fashion.