Wade's Pc Help Blog

There are many computers that I see on a daily basis in which ctrl+alt+del will only give you a message that says "Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator" like the picture below.


A majority of those computers the Task Manager will have become disabled because of virus and or spyware applications that will disable the Task Manager once it has been installed on the computer. There are several ways this problem can be fixed.

The first solution will only work for Windows Xp Pro:


• Click Start button
• Then click on Run
• Type in "gpedit.msc" (without quotation marks) in the dialog box and click OK
• In the Group Policy settings window
• Select User Configuration
• Select Administrative Templates
• Select System
• Select Ctrl+Alt+Delete options
• Select Remove Task Manager
• Double-click the Remove Task Manager option

The second solution will work with Windows Xp Home:

• Click Start button
• Then click on Run
• Type in "regedit" (without quotation marks) in the dialog box and click OK
• Search or browse for HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ System
• Look for the registry key "DisableTaskMgr"
• Double click on the registry key. The registry key will either be a value of 1 (Disables Task Manager) or a value of 0 (Enables Task Manager)
• Change the registry key to 0 and close regedit
• Restart Windows

The third solution is the easiest:

•Copy and paste the following into notepad
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"DisableTaskMgr"=dword:00000000

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and save as Enable_Task_Manager.reg
• Double click on the file you just made, you will be presented with a dialog box.


• Click on yes and reboot Windows Xp.


If your Task Manager has been disabled and you are the only administrator chances are that your computer is infected with viruses and spyware. I recommend the following Virus and spyware protection.
The best Anti-Spyware Protection you can download for free
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