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 CTRL­ALT­DEL on the keyboard
• Press CTRL­SHIFT­ESC on the keyboard
• Right­click 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

1. Click Start, Run, type gpedit.msc and click OK.
2. Under User Configuration, Click on the plus (+) next to 
Administrative Templates
3. Click on the plus (+) next system, then click on Ctrl+Alt+Delete 
Options
4. Find Remove Task Manager in the right­hand pane and double 
click on it
5. Choose the option "Not Configured"  and click Ok. 
6. Close the Group Policy Window

Method 2:  Change the Task Manager Option through the 
Run line

1. Click on Start, Run and type the following command exactly and 
press Enter

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current 
Version\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t 
REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Method 3: Change Task Manager through a Registry REG file
 1. Click on Start, Run, and type Notepad and press Enter
2. 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\CurrentVersi
on\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

1. Click on Start, Run, and type REGEDIT and press Enter
2. Navigate to the following branch

HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ 
Current Version \ Policies\ System

3. In the right pane, find and delete the value named 
DisableTaskMgr
4. Close the registry editor