Ok - at a friend's house this afternoon and was asked "Could I help with ... a few problems on the computer."
I got almost all of them resolved, but there was still one issue when I left. It's not bothering her (she never uses Task Manager), but I'd sure like to fix it the next time I'm there.
Problem: As stated in title. To expand a bit: Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del does absolutely nothing! The keys work individually, but simply do nothing as a group. As near as I can tell there is no way to get to Task Manager.
I'm familiar with the policies method of disabling Task Manager -- but was not getting ANY message about "not allowed" or any other indication that ANYTHING was happening (no symbol on task bar, no note, etc.).
Nevertheless, I tried the "fix" for this issue -- removing the "Task Manager" key in the registry at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
\Microsoft
\WindowsNT
\CurrentVe
rsion
EXCEPT there was no task manager key to remove!!
I also confirmed that the DisableTaskMgr value is ZERO (as it should be) at:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software
\Microsoft
\Windows\C
urrentVers
ion\Polici
es\System
Finally, I tried the "Enable Task Manager" tweak from Kelly's Korner.
Nothing changed!
She has had this computer for quite a while, and says has tried Ctrl-Alt-Del in the past and it's never worked -- so System Restore is not an option either.
Finally, she is really averse to doing a reload (she's got a lot of installed programs, "tweaked" settings, etc. -- and is simply very much opposed to that option). Unfortunately I probably made her even more against that, because I was able to resolve virtually all of her issues (this was not one of her concerns -- it just bugs me).
Of course I also confirmed that she is an admin user, so this is not a user-rights issue. And I tried "toggling" the "Enable Task Manager" value to 1 & back to 0 (with reboots after each).
Anyone seen this? I'm looking for a specific fix -- not a potpourri of things to try (I'm quite capable of that myself -- and since I don't have ready access to the computer this wouldn't be particularly useful anyway).
System is an HP Pavillion 750c, 512m, XP Home - SP2 with all updates
Start Free Trial
