Troubleshooting: Task Manager disabled problem

This is a very common problem faced by many people. Whenever you try to open “Task Manager”, an error appears like

Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator

Or when you right click taskbar, Task Manager is greyed out. So you can’t open it from there also. So today, lets see how to fix this problem.

There can be two answers to this problem. First is that your System Administrator has disabled it. And the second is your system is infected by a virus/spyware.

Lets see how to enable Task Manager from the registry editor.

1) CLick on Run from the Start menu. Now type “regedit”. It will open registry editor. Now we need to tweak it.

2) Now you need to go to the following registry entries and find a DWORD value named “DisableTaskMgr” in right pane and if you find it, then delete it, else don’t do anything.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
HKEY_USERS\.default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System

Now your Task Manager should be enabled.

Sometimes some viruses/spywares also disable task manager. If that’s the situation, than you need a good antivirus / spyware program. Scan your complete system with an antivirus like AVG or Avira AntiVir and also with a good antispyware like Spybot or Spyware Terminator. Mind it, that I said “complete system”, so scan your all drives with these programs.

Note: If you are new to Registry Editor, follow all my instructions with acute care. Don’t do anything wrong in editing registry, as that can cause havoc if you did something wrong there. So please read my instructions well, and then go forward.