"Task Manager has been disabled by administrator"

Hi folks, I hope this is a fairly simple problem to solve. For some reason, when I try to start the Task Manager (using Control+Alt+Delete), I get a message saying "Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator." There are only two user accounts on our computer, my wife's and my own, and both are set as admin (no other people use our computer). The Task Manager works under my wife's user profile, but not under my own. I've never consciously disabled this very useful function. Can somebody please tell me how to enable it again? In case it's useful, I am using Windows XP, and have SP2 loaded.

Thanks very much for any assistance! - Ardbeg3

 

Here is how to regain the use of Task Manager.

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Taskmanager_error.htm

This will not remove any virus that has caused the problem so you should follow Pete's advice to clean your system. I have also seen Control Panel disabled at the same time that Task Manager was disabled by certain infections.

 

That worked!

Hiya, PeteC and Whiskeyman,

Thanks to both of you, gents, this problem appears to be solved. I ran my virus scanners and spyware sweepers, and detected no problem at all, but agreed that it was excellent advice to begin with. Followed that with Whiskeyman's recommendation, and managed to re-enable the Task Manager with one simple command. I'm going to make a note of the command and the website where Whiskeyman found it, in case it recurs. For now, the problem is gone.

Thanks kindly! I do appreciate your time. Regards, -- ardbeg3

(PS -- it's highly appropriate that someone named "Whiskeyman" came to the rescue of someone named "Ardbeg3 ". If you haven't sampled the beautiful smoke and peat of an Ardbeg, Whiskeyman, I recommend you try it. Again, thanks!)