diff --git a/lib/messagelib.php b/lib/messagelib.php
index ec2d3f28abd..916372926a1 100644
--- a/lib/messagelib.php
+++ b/lib/messagelib.php
@@ -46,7 +46,9 @@ function message_send($eventdata) {
 
     //TODO: this function is very slow and inefficient, it would be a major bottleneck in cron processing, this has to be improved in 2.0
     //      probably we could add two parameters with user messaging preferences and we could somehow preload/cache them in cron
-    //TODO: we need to solve problems with database transactions here somehow
+
+    //TODO: we need to solve problems with database transactions here somehow, for now we just prevent transactions - sorry
+    $DB->transactions_forbidden();
 
     if (isset($CFG->block_online_users_timetosee)) {
         $timetoshowusers = $CFG->block_online_users_timetosee * 60;