How to re-enable Task Manager in XP, getting error "disabled by administrator"

If you have that, you probably have a few other things you don't know about yet.

Your registry editor (regedit.exe) also may be afflicted, but we can fix that too.

If you are seeing things like this:

You do not have sufficient security privileges to restore your system.

The System Restore tab is missing from My Computer Properties.

System Restore has been turned off by group policy.  To turn on System Restore, contact your domain Administrator.

The System Restore tab is available, but the Turn off System Restore (disabled by Group Policy) box is greyed out.

Task Manager has been disabled by your System Administrator.

Registry Editor has been disabled by your System Administrator.

Task Manager has been disabled by Group Policy.

Registry Editor has been disabled by Group Policy.

The command prompt has been disabled by your administrator.  Press any key to continue...

The usual advice is something along the lines of "something has been disabled in Group Policy...", and that is probably true that something has been disabled, but you need to know what that something is and what to do about it.

If you are using XP Home, you will not get far with advice to use the Group Policy Editor since there is no Group Policy Editor in XP Home and that

really doesn't tell you where to look in the Group Policies even if you could run Group Policy Editor.

You need a comprehensive solution that will work for all versions of XP and do not require hunting around in the Group Policy Editor or the registry to find where things are that might have been disabled.

Unless you disabled these things on purpose, the chances are good that your system has a malicious software infection.  The malware knows what tools you are going to use to try and find and remove it, so the malware disables the things you are most likely to use and keeps them from running so you can't find the malicious software and remove it.

If your system has this kind of affliction, whatever malicious software tools you are currently using or have been using have failed to protect your system so you may want to expand your malicious software prevention and detection horizons to prevent these kinds of afflictions in the first place.

The malicious software will be happiest to fool you into thinking you need to so something drastic to fix your system - like a Repair Install, System Restore point, or a total reinstallation of XP.  That is what it would like you to do, but such measures are not required.

You need to fix the immediate problem of the tools not working, then scan your system for malicious software when you are done.

No matter what kind of malicious software scanning tools you have already used, they are unlikely to fix this problem because they cannot tell if the changes to your system were on purpose (you or an Administrator made them) or some malicious software changed them, so the scanning tools will leave these things alone (this is usually a good thing).

If your Task Manager is afflicted in this manner, there are probably other things that also don't work - like Registry Editor, System Restore and Command Prompt, so fix them all at once even if you haven't found out they are broken yet.

These registry commands will remove the registry entries that are stopping the programs from opening.  Even if the registry entries are not there, these commands are safe to run and will work for all versions of XP.

Before making any changes to your registry, back up the registry with this popular free tool:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/erunt.html

Open notepad to create a new text file:

Click Start, Run and in the box enter:

notepad

Click OK to open a new notepad file.

Copy and paste the following lines of text into the new notepad file.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

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

"DisableTaskMgr"=-

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

"DisableRegistryTools"=-

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System]

"DisableCMD"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

"DisableTaskMgr"=-

[HKEY_USERS.default\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]

"DisableTaskMgr"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon]

"DisableCAD"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\SystemRestore]

"DisableConfig"=-

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\SystemRestore]

"DisableSR"=-

Save the new text file with a .reg extension to your desktop or someplace you can remember with a name you can remember, something like:

enableit.reg

After saving the file, close notepad.

Locate the enableit.reg file on your desktop and double click it.

Alternatively, you can right click the enableit.reg file, choose Open With... and select the Registry Editor.

Respond in the affirmative to the question... Are you sure you want to add the information to the registry?

You should then see a message that the information was successfully entered into the registry.

You can remove the enableit.reg file when you are done.

Since you had or have an infection, follow up with this:

Perform some scans for malicious software, then fix any remaining issues:

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM):  http://malwarebytes.org/

SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS):  http://www.superantispyware.com/

They can be uninstalled later if desired.

One of these should take care of your problem:

""Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator" error"

< http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555546 >

""Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator" error message"

  < http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555480 >

HTH,

  JW