Task
Manager Has Been Disabled, How to Fix It?
Many
times when working on a computer that has
been infected with a virus, trojan, or piece of spyware I find myself
with the Task Manager being disabled. Malware creators like to disable
Task Manager so it makes solving the problem and removing the issue
difficult.
If this happens you'll normally have to edit the Windows registry to
fix the problem. A restriction has been placed on the user to not allow
them to run Task Manager, this might be ok in an office environment
where the IT department wants to control things, but in a home office
this can cause major problems trying to fix a malware or virus issue.
Listed below you will find the many ways to reenable Task Manager along
with an automatic method that works wonders.
To open the
Task Manager, you normally would do one of the following:
- Press
CTRL-ALT-DEL on the keyboard
- Press
CTRL-SHIFT-ESC on the keyboard
- Right-click
on a blank area on the start bar and choose Task Manager
- Click on
Start, Run and type TASKMGR in the run box and press Enter
Sometimes
instead of Task Manager opening you'll see the following screen. In
these cases, you'll have to follow the methods below to re-enable
access to the Task Manager.

First we'll
begin with the various registry modification methods for correcting
this problem.
Method 1 - Using
the Group Policy Editor in Windows XP Professional
- Click
Start, Run, type gpedit.msc and click OK.
- Under User
Configuration, Click on the plus (+) next to Administrative Templates
- Click on
the plus (+) next tSystem, then click on Ctrl+Alt+Delete Options
- Find Remove
Task Manager in the right-hand pane and double click on it
- Choose the
option "Not Configured" and click Ok.
- Close the
Group Policy Window
Method
2: Change the Task Manager Option through the Run line
- Click on Start, Run and type the
following command exactly and press Enter
REG add
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v
DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
Method
3: Change Task Manager through a Registry REG file
- Click on Start, Run, and type Notepad
and press Enter
- Copy and paste the information between
the dotted lines into Notepad and save it to your desktop as
taskmanager.reg
------------------------------------
Windows
Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"DisableTaskMgr"=dword:00000000
-------------------------------------
3. Double click on the taskmanager.reg
file to enter the information into the Windows registry
Method 4: Delete
the restriction in the registry manually
- Click
on Start, Run, and type REGEDIT and press Enter
- Navigate to
the following branch
HKEY_CURRENT_USER
\ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies\ System
- In the
right pane, find and delete the value named DisableTaskMgr
- Close the
registry editor
Method 5: Download
and Run FixTaskManager program 
- Click on
the following links and download the program FixTaskManager to
your Desktop
Main
Site
Backup
Location
- Double-click
on the file FixTaskManager
on your desktop and run it
Written by Mark Hasting
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