Facebook recently released Standalone Messenger for Windows, which lets you use Facebook without being on the Facebook site, but you still need to login to Facebook website in your Browser to log in to Messenger. Have you noticed FacebookUpdate.exe process running in Task Manager under Processes list, yep! That’s related to Facebook Messenger and it’s configured to run on startup after installing FMessenger to automatically install updates much like to Chrome.
Update: Facebook Messenger for Firefox and Windows have been discontinued.
Seems Facebook adopted installing automatic updates for their app in a manner, which Chrome updates through its GoogleUpdate.exe and Chrome will be installed onto the User’s appdata, same here.
Facebook Messenger will be installed on AppData directory, here is its path “C:\Users\venkat\AppData\Local\Facebook\Messenger\version number” where FacebookUpdate.exe runs from “C:\Users\venkat\AppData\Local\Facebook\Update’ directory.
“We’re testing out a first version of the app with a small group of people. During this trial period, we plan on rolling out changes to the app and expect outages and periods of instability as we make improvements.”
“To try out the first version of this app, just complete a one-time setup
. Note: Messenger for Windows will automatically install updates. “ this is what Messenger for Windows page says.
Disabling FacebookUpdate.exe?
Installing the app online made it possible for Facebook to install FacebookUpdate onto user’s Computer, which runs on startup and periodically checks for updates and installs them if found. So installing FM offline won’t install this crap, but at present standalone/offline installer for Facebook Messenger is not made available by Facebook.
If you install Yahoo Messenger online via small setup file YahooUpdater service installs onto your Computer and runs YahooAuService.exe (we covered how to disable this also) this won’t be the case if you install it offline.
We tried to disable this FacebookUpdate.exe through MSConfig and other methods, but no luck it keeps running on startup makes anyone really annoying.
Unless Facebook Offers offline version for their app or offers uninstaller for their FM updater, currently its not possible to disable this, the last case where you may uninstall FM to get rid of it.
Facebook and Google updater services can easily be disabled. They run as scheduled tasks. I use Ccleaner, under startup items there are a list of scheduled tasks. Scheduled to run at startup. Just disable or delete the line item.