Messenger service is a network-based system notification

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

that was included in some earlier versions of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

. This retired technology, although it has a similar name, is not related in any way to the later, Internet-based Microsoft Messenger service for instant messaging or to

Windows Messenger Windows Messenger is a discontinued instant messaging client included in Windows XP. Designed for use by both corporate and home users, it was originally created, in 2001, as a streamlined and integrated version of MSN Messenger. It was upgrade ...

and

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...

(formerly named MSN Messenger) client software.

Utilities

WinPopup sends messages from one Windows computer to another on the same

LAN Lan or LAN may also refer to: Science and technology * Local asymptotic normality, a fundamental property of regular models in statistics * Longitude of the ascending node, one of the orbital elements used to specify the orbit of an object in sp ...

. It is available in all Windows versions from

Windows for Workgroups Windows 3.1 is a major release of Microsoft Windows. It was Released-to-manufacturing, released to manufacturing on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series ran as a Shell (computing), shell ...

3.1 to Windows Me, but has never been included with

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

-based operating systems. WinPopup works by means of the

NetBEUI NetBIOS () is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, NetB ...

protocol. There is also a port to

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

with an extended feature called LinPopUp, which allows adding Linux computers to the set. Linpopup is an

X Window The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

graphical port of Winpopup, and a package for Debian linux. It runs over

Samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havin ...

. Linpopup does not have to run all the time, can run minimized, and its messages are encrypted with a strong cypher. The traditional Unix functional equivalent of WinPopUp would be the ''wall'' and ''write'' commands.

Uses

The Messenger Service was originally designed for use by system administrators to notify Windows users about their networks. It was used maliciously to present

pop-up advertisement Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-u ...

s to users over the Internet (by using mass-messaging systems which sent a desired message to a specified range of

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

es). Even though Windows XP included a

firewall Firewall may refer to: * Firewall (computing), a technological barrier designed to prevent unauthorized or unwanted communications between computer networks or hosts * Firewall (construction), a barrier inside a building, designed to limit the spre ...

, it was not enabled by default. Because of this, many users received such messages. As a result of this abuse, the Messenger Service was disabled by default in

Windows XP Service Pack 2 Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

. The Messenger Service was discontinued in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and Windows Server 2008 and replaced by the old MSG.exe.

Architecture

The Messenger service in

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

and

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

uses the

NetBIOS over TCP/IP NetBIOS over TCP/IP (NBT, or sometimes NetBT) is a networking protocol that allows legacy computer applications relying on the NetBIOS API to be used on modern TCP/IP networks. NetBIOS was developed in the early 1980s, targeting very small network ...

(NetBT) protocol. The service waits for a message, then it displays it onscreen. The alternative way to send a message is to write it to a

MailSlot A Mailslot is a one-way interprocess communication mechanism, available on the Microsoft Windows operating system, that allows communication between processes both locally and over a network. The use of Mailslots is generally simpler than named pi ...

named ''messngr''. It requires

UDP ports In computer networking, a port is a number assigned to uniquely identify a connection endpoint and to direct data to a specific service. At the software level, within an operating system, a port is a logical construct that identifies a specific ...

135, 137, and 138 and

TCP ports This is a list of TCP and UDP port numbers used by protocols for operation of network applications. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) only need one port for duplex, bidirectional traffic. They usually u ...

135, 139, and 445 to work. If access to the ports from outside a network is not blocked, it can lead to the aforementioned spam issue. In

Windows NT 3.5 Windows NT 3.5 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was released on September 21, 1994, as the successor to Windows NT 3.1 and the predecessor to Windows NT 3.51. One ...

, NT 3.51 and

NT 4.0 Windows NT 4.0 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 3.51, which was released to manufacturing on July 31, 1996, and then to retail ...

, Messenger used the older NetBIOS protocol. (NetBIOS is not installed with Windows 2000.) Messenger service can be used by either Net Send command from a command-line interface. In addition, the Alerter service uses Messenger to send administrative alerts to network subscribers.

References

External links

*Official Microsoft sources ** Knowledgebase entry fo
Messenger Service of Windows
** Command documentation fo
Net send
*
Disabling The Messenger Service in Windows XP
{{Microsoft Windows components Windows services LAN messengers

Utilities

Uses

Architecture

See also

References

External links