I'm not sure how to remove messenger. I just looked in the options and disabled it from starting with windows. As for the Auto Update, that's easy. Right click on MY COMPUTER and choose properties. There you will see a tab named AUTOMATIC UPDATES. Simply check the radio button for Manual Updates Only. That's all there is to that. However, if you want a more permanent solution, right click on MY COMPUTER again. This time select manage. Scroll down to Services and Applications. Click on it and go to the services directory. Once you have clicked on this it will show all services on your computer. Scroll through the services and read the information in the window. You should be able to find just about any service you don't want running. You can choose automatic,manual, or disabled. Hope this helps!!

you can remove it from the add/remove windows components thingie. then go into your c:\program files directory and delete the "messenger" (or something like that) folder.

here's what i did to remove windows messenger just copy and paste this command onto run : RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove and it will ask if you want to uninstall. Enjoy!!!!!!!!

Wow, that's pretty cool bud! Thanks!

glad i can help

Just one thing to note for users of Outlook XP with Exchange; you might get a 60 second delay when launching Outlook if you disable MSN Instant Messenger as listed above and you don't have it disabled in Outlook. You can read about that here:
 
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q290025
 
Also, if you have AD setup, the method APK mentions will probably not work due to inheritence of policies in an AD domain. You will have to apply these changes (in the same way as illustrated) to the "Default Domain Policy". The easiest way to switch to that policy, is to open an MMC, and add a Group Policy snap-in. Then, select "Browse" and pick Default Domain Policy. Click OK to everything, and you should be set to make the changes. I *think* the default replication timeframe is about 15 minutes for the changes to get to all controllers and then to the clients.

This does not come with the HOME version of XP...Only Pro version
 
I uninstalled messenger using the sysoc.inf hack on my preinstalled XP Home ver.

Does anybody know if you can place the gpedit management console from XP Pro into XP Home?

Bump, because nobody seems to see this anymore yet we are getting questions about it still.