Vista - How to to remove/hide the Windows Live Messenger Download from the Vista start menu

Can anyone advice on how to to remove/hide the Windows Live Messenger Download from the Vista start menu ?

I understand that the Window Live Messenger can be disabled using the GPOs settings, just wondering whether the Windows Live Messenger Download can be remove/hide from the start menu using GPOs setting.

Would appreciate anyone's help on this.

Thank you.

Hello Ahjik, and welcome to Vista Forums.

I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean a shortcut of this in the Start menu, then are you not able to right click on it and click Delete and OK/Yes to allow it to be deleted?

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi Brink

Thanks for answering my question.
Just to clarify on the intent of my question.

yes, I could do a right click and delete the shortcut from the start menu for a single machine .
However, i am building a Vista image to be use for deployment to my entire organisation. Hence, I am hoping that I could use GPOs to do the controlling.

I understand that i could use GPOs to disable the use of WLM and also prevent end-users from downloading Windows Live Messenger . However, I was hoping that I could use GPOs to hide/remove the Windows Live Messenger Download from the Vista start menu so that end-users could not even see the Windows Live Messenger Download from the Vista start menu.

I realised that I could do a right click on the Windows Live Messenger Download short cut on the start menu, and check on the "Hidden" property to hide the short cut. But, I could still do a search for Windows Live Messenger Download and it can be found.

Hear from you soon.

I'm afraid that I do not know of a way to do this specific action with a GPO. However you could use Computer Configuration, Administrative Templates, Windows Components, Windows Messenger, then enable "Do not allow Windows Messenger to be run". This will make using the download from that link useless.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

hi Shawn

Thanks alot for the help.

Guess I have no choice but to live with it.

Thanks again.