Messenger service was 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 Manag ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

that was included in some earlier versions of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. This retired technology, although it has a similar name, is not related in any way to the later, Internet-based

Microsoft Messenger service Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger Service, .NET Messenger Service and Windows Live Messenger Service) was an instant messaging and presence system developed by Microsoft in 1999 for use with its MSN Messenger software. It was used by instant m ...

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 upgr ...

and

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

(formerly named MSN Messenger) client software.

Utilities

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

LAN Lan or LAN may 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 space * ...

. 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 on April 6, 1992, as a successor to Windows 3.0. Like its predecessors, the Windows 3.1 series run as a Shell (computing), shell on top of MS-DOS; it was t ...

(Ver 3.11) to

Windows ME Windows Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and t ...

, but has never been included with

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

-based operating systems. WinPopup works by means of the NetBEUI protocol. There is also a port to

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

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 originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been a ...

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

Samba Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or ...

. 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- ...

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 assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...

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 successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

. 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, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008, codenamed "Longhorn Server" (alternatives: "Windows Vista Server" or "Windows Server Vista"), is the seventh major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server b ...

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, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

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 successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

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 netwo ...

(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 named ''messngr''. It requires UDP ports 135, 137, and 138 and TCP ports 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, NT 3.51 and NT 4.0, Messenger used the older

NetBIOS 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, Net ...

protocol. (NetBIOS is not installed with Windows 2000.) In the past 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. You have to be part of a domain, not a workgroup.

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