Task Manager problems

[Sheenar]

I tried to Ctrl-Alt-Del earlier to close a slow program, and it told me that Task Manager was disabled by the administrator. But I am the administrator (I am the owner of the computer) and it was working before. Anyone have any ideas as to what happened?

[Kaligraphic]

Some malware will disable the task manager to keep from being shut down.

You can fix it with a registry edit, but don't go playing around in there too much or you can break things. Annoying, important things.

I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll give you the location and what to change tomorrow. In the mean time, I suggest you run a virus scan or something. I don't know if it'll remove the malware, but it's worth a try.

[termyt]

Both viruses and malware will disable that. You should do both a malware and a virus scan of your PC.

To detect malware, I recommend a good, free software package called [color="Blue"]Ad-Aware. [/color]

If you are infected, you will not be able to fix the task manager until you are clean. (The virus or malware will just disable it again)

Once you are clean, follow these instructions from Leo:
[color="Blue"]http://ask-leo.com/why_is_my_task_manager_disabled_and_how_do_i_fix_it.html[/color]

[Shao Feng-Li]

And if all else fails (seems to happen more than not), reformat...

[Mithrandir]

If you have not installed anything new that would do this on purpose (a windows security update, firewall software, virus scanner, etc), then I would echo what others here have said.

Get a good virus/malware/spyware package and scan the machine. I'd start with adaware (I think that's how it's spelled) and go from there. Anyone else of other suggestions?

[Shao Feng-Li]

I use the free version of Avast Anit- Virus. Things does a really good job.

[Saj]

Running adaware a few times would be the best bet