Messenger services stops after being started

Howdy.
My messenger services has always been stopped. Now I want to send an
email to 2 users and myself that the backup was completed from within
a batch file.
In testing net send, I found that once I started the service manually
it would begin stopping after having just been started. In fact, while
I can change the startup setting to automatic, once I exit the
services app, the startup setting changes back to manual.
The alerter service is set to automatic. Even rebooted and tried again
changing the messenger startup but with no success.
Have not found any group/local polices preventing use of messenger.

Appreciate any suggestions/comments. Using XP Pro sp2, windows server
2003 and Robocopy.

Thank you,

Rey