Messenger Related Popups ie, Patchnow.org, Updatenow.org, etc.

I recently bought a laptop on ebay and it is a very nice, used IBM (Win2K Pro). However, I kept getting popups referring to how my computer wasn't secure, etc. They referred to various web sites where I could pay for the software to remove them. I found a couple of threads here on this site, but none that had the answer. After quite a bit of research, I came across the solution. The popups are related to Messenger--see system services. There is a program written by Steve Gibson at www.grc.com called ShootTheMessenger. This program will enable/disable messenger with one click. So far it seems to work. You can also disable messenger in other ways, but this one is very simple and easy.