Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Malfunction clt-alt-del

Jun 10, 2012 8:34PM PDT

I failed to call the program manager on pressing the hot key clt-alt-del, it popped up an error message said that it is stopped my administration manager (translated from chinese). Anyone have an idea? please help.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Clarification Request
Re: no task manager
Jun 11, 2012 8:02PM PDT

If I'm resolved to get this done, is there any good suggestion?

- Collapse -
You didn't see
Jun 11, 2012 8:49PM PDT

Kees' suggestion then.

Since this is a sign of malware damage run your anti-virus and anti-malware scanners. If you can't boot up, use your anti-virus software's rescue CD.

If you don't have one of those, try AVG's; http://www.avg.com/gb-en/avg-rescue-cd

Did you already try Safe Mode?

Mark

- Collapse -
Answer
Re: no task manager
Jun 10, 2012 8:43PM PDT

That could very well be caused by a virus. And removing that virus might not undo the change in the registry it made.
Did you already run one of those antivirus CD's?

Kees

- Collapse -
Answer
Easy fix is to ...
Jun 12, 2012 10:31AM PDT

Click Start, Run and type the bold text below exactly as given, it is all one line! : (better yet - Copy and paste the bolded text into your Run box)

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

Next easiest, you can follow this link and download then run a REG file to do the same thing (since it is a REG file you may or may not get some warning message about potential malware but it is not malware)-
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/reg/EnableTM.reg

or Easy but a bit more time consuming, you could fix things with a manual registry edit as follows:


1. Click Start, Run and type Regedit.exe
2. Navigate to the following branch:


HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies\ System


3. In the right-pane, delete the value named DisableTaskMgr
4. Close Regedit.exe

The advice to scan for malware is sound and SHOULD BE DONE as it is generally malware that disables TaskManager but a malware scan doesn't generally re-enable it.