Cannot Access Regedit, How to Fix It?

Many times when working on a computer that has been infected with a virus, trojan, or piece of spyware I find myself with my most important command, Regedit, the Windows Registry Editor being disabled. Virus creators like to disable the Registry Editor so it makes solving the problem and removing the issue difficult.

Sometimes administrators in IT departments may place restrictions on using the regedit command to keep employees from changes things on company computers, but viruses and other issues may also try to disable it.

Listed below you will find the different ways to enable regedit, the Registry Editor.

First we'll begin with the method that appears to work the best.

Method 1 - Enabling the Registry with VBScript

Doug Knox, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, has created a VBScript that enables or disables the Registry Editor based on the following location in the registry. Of course, since the registry editor is disabled, you can't change it manually, so Doug wrote a Visual Basic Script to accomplish the task.

HKey_Current_User\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\

Visit Doug's page and download Registry Tools VBScript to your desktop, double-click on it to run it, then reboot your computer and try to open the Registry Editor.

Task Manager Has Been Disabled, How to Fix It?

Many times when working on a computer that has been infected with a virus, trojan, or piece of spyware I find myself with the Task Manager being disabled. Malware creators like to disable Task Manager so it makes solving the problem and removing the issue difficult.

If this happens you'll normally have to edit the Windows registry to fix the problem. A restriction has been placed on the user to not allow them to run Task Manager, this might be ok in an office environment where the IT department wants to control things, but in a home office this can cause major problems trying to fix a malware or virus issue.

Listed below you will find the many ways to reenable Task Manager along with an automatic method that works wonders.



To open the Task Manager, you normally would do one of the following:
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL on the keyboard
Press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC on the keyboard
Right-click on a blank area on the start bar and choose Task Manager
Click on Start, Run and type TASKMGR in the run box and press Enter
Sometimes instead of Task Manager opening you'll see the following screen. In these cases, you'll have to follow the methods below to re-enable access to the Task Manager.


First we'll begin with the various registry modification methods for correcting this problem.

Method 1 - Using the Group Policy Editor in Windows XP Professional
Click Start, Run, type gpedit.msc and click OK.
Under User Configuration, Click on the plus (+) next to Administrative Templates
Click on the plus (+) next tSystem, then click on Ctrl+Alt+Delete Options
Find Remove Task Manager in the right-hand pane and double click on it
Choose the option "Not Configured" and click Ok.
Close the Group Policy Window
Method 2: Change the Task Manager Option through the Run line
Click on Start, Run and type the following command exactly and press Enter
REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f

Method 3: Change Task Manager through a Registry REG file
Click on Start, Run, and type Notepad and press Enter
Copy and paste the information between the dotted lines into Notepad and save it to your desktop as taskmanager.reg
------------------------------------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"DisableTaskMgr"=dword:00000000
-------------------------------------

3. Double click on the taskmanager.reg file to enter the information into the Windows registry

Method 4: Delete the restriction in the registry manually
Click on Start, Run, and type REGEDIT and press Enter
Navigate to the following branch

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

In the right pane, find and delete the value named DisableTaskMgr
Close the registry editor

Method 5: Download the following file ..


Click to Download