I tried the same messenger fix, though through gpedit.msc I'm not sure if it worked quite as I expected. I had one pop-up while I was AFK after I had done the fix. I think this may be because I didn't reboot after the change. Gpedit.msc does not, however have a save feature, so it is hard for me to tell if the change did apply. I did a reboot and haven't seen one yet, so that may have been it. We'll see. I also downloaded Ad-aware, and my god, I had literally hundreds of adware programs and cache files, etc. Needless to say, they are no longer. Now, can anyone recommend a superb pop-up killer program? The best for your money type...easy to use, no hassles, etc.