Task Manager Disabled: How To Open A Disabled Task Manager

Have you ever run into a situation where you get an alert message that says “Task Manager bad been disabled by your administrator”?

You may encounter this if you are not logged in as the administrator on a particular PC running Windows. Many times you may feel that it is necessary to access the task manager for various reasons. It may be bad news to you if you run into this situation when you must check your system resources or end the task of a running program or file. The good news is you can enable the task manager.

Editing or modifying your system registry may render your system unstable or damaged. Make sure you are able to backup the registry and that you are certain that you follow each step in it’s entirety.

Below is a method demonstrating how to enable a disabled task manager using the Registry Editor and via the Run Menu.

How to open a disabled Task Manager using the Registry Editor

1. Go to Start menu > Run > type in regedit and then press enter.





2. Navigate to and find the following registry path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
3. Find the entry DisableTaskMgr. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableTaskMgr. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.





4. Navigate to and find the following registry path:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy/Objects\LocalUser\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
5. Find the entry DisableTaskMgr. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableTaskMgr. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.
6. Navigate to and find the following registry path:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system
7. Find the entry DisableTaskMgr. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableTaskMgr. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.
8. Navigate to and find the following registry path:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
9. Find the entry DisableCAD. If this entry is not present then you must add one by right clicking the right side pane and then selecting new DWORD value. Rename it DisableCAD. Double click this entry and make sure the DWORD value is set to 00000000.
10. Close the registry editor.
11. Restart your computer.

A much shorter process for enabling a disabled task manager is using the Run menu to enter a simple command line.

1. Go to Start menu > Run
2. Copy and paste the following line:
   REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f



3. Press enter.
4. Restart your computer.