I, like many other people around the world, was happy to upgrade to Windows XP when Microsoft released it late in 2001. However, I was dismayed by the forced bundling of the Microsoft Instant Messaging client, Windows Messenger.

I don't like IM clients overall.

They eat up my computers valuable CPU processing time.

They are a security flaw! Microsoft has been continually patching their product since it's come out.

On top of that, Microsoft doesn't want you to get rid of it. There is no way to remove it through the Add/Remove programs box, and no official uninstaller. If that's not a reason to get rid of it, I don't know what is!

I am not the only person who thinks this way. Fortunately, rather clever people have found a way to get rid of this pesky program with a single command from the Run... dialog box:

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

After executing, Windows Messenger will be gone forever! Goodbye, and good riddance.