An unavailable Task Manager

Member William Main (wmain) asked for help troubleshooting a Task Manager mix-up.
He reported a problem with a PC running Windows XP Professional. Whenever he
attempted to access Task Manager from the user account, he received this error message:
Task Manager Has Been Disabled By Your Administrator.

He added, "I've looked in the system policy editor and the registry and cannot find
anywhere to turn this back on. It used to work. I've also searched Windows Help for
'disable task manager' and followed all of the recommendations."

Obviously, since Task Manager was once accessible on this user account, some user right
has been inadvertently changed. Task Manager can be accessed by hitting
[Ctrl][Alt][Delete] or by right-clicking on the Task Bar. In this particular case, Task
Manager is unavailable (Figure A). Main knows the problem exists in a changed policy
setting, but he cannot find the location in the system registry to make the needed changes.
Fortunately, TechRepublic members were quick to point him in the right direction.

Figure A

The disabled Task Manager

Gpedit.msc: Go, go gadget command

Both BeerMonster and skc@irmphila.com point to the Gpedit.msc command and the
group policy configuration. Perform the following steps to gain access to the group policy
settings in Windows XP:

1. Click Start | Run.

2. Enter gpedit.msc at the command line and click OK. This will open the Group
Policy settings window shown in Figure B.
3. Select User Configuration | Administrative Templates | System | Ctrl+Alt+Delete
Options | Remove Task Manager.
4. Double-click the Remove Task Manager option from the Group Policy menu. You
can then disable, enable, or set the policy to Not Configured. Remember: Since
the policy in question is called Remove Task Manager, by disabling the policy,
you are actually enabling the Task Manager. Disabling or setting this policy to
Not Configured should alleviate Main's problem.
 Figure B

The Windows XP Group Policy menu

The same procedure will work under Windows 2000, but the access path is slightly
different, as shown in Figure C. Perform the following steps to gain access to group
policy settings:

1. Click Start | Run.

2. Enter gpedit.msc at the command line and click OK. This will open the Group
Policy settings window shown in Figure C.
3. Select User Configuration | Administrative Templates | System | Logon/Logoff |
Disable Task Manager.

Figure C
 The Windows 2000 Group Policy menu

Get out the stylebook: It's time to edit (the registry that is)
This brings us to the second solution to Main's problem. In addition to the Gpedit.msc
command, a direct registry edit can produce the same results. AsyscoKid refers Main to
the Windows Guide Network. The information outlined on the site provides the
instructions for successfully editing the system registry to disable Task Manager.

Let me point out that when you use the Gpedit.msc utility, you're actually editing the
registry; you're just doing it through a nice GUI. When you modify a policy, a particular
registry key and DWORD value are created, altered, or deleted, depending on how you
modify the policy. If the policy is set to Not Configured, the corresponding registry value
will not exist. If the policy has been disabled, the registry value will exist but will be set
to 0. If the policy has been enabled, the registry value will exist and will be set to 1.

In Main's case, the Task Manager as been disabled, so he would use the following steps to
reenable it:
 1. Use regedit to open the Registry Editor and locate the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policie
s\System.
2. Find the DWORD value named Disable TaskMgr and set it to 0 or delete it
altogether (see Figures D and E).

Figure D

The system registry location for disabling/enabling the Windows Task Manager

Figure E

The DWORD value can be toggled to enable/disable the Windows Task Manager.

This will make the Task Manager available again, although you might need to log off for
the changes to take effect.

This same process can be used to disable the Task Manager, but you might have to create
the registry key System under the Policies key. After creating the System key, create a
new REG_DWORD (DWORD value) named Disable TaskMgr and set the data value to
1.