Task Manager Disabled

[Guest]

when I try to open Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) I get the message "Task
Manager has been Disabled by your Administrator. I am the only one on this
computer with Admin rights. It's XP Home and the other user is my son on a
limited account. How could it have been disabled? How can I restart the
service?
Thanks

 

[Guest]

I have managed to restart the service using a small file I found in this
forum. I still don't know how it was stopped though? When i open Task Manager
I see a strange file kernels64.exe which never used to be there before. Maybe
this is a virus? Maybe something to do with losing task manager?

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

Quite likely, its a virus or some other type of malware. They often set these types of restrictions and forcibly terminate applications that could be used to help shut the malware down. Ensure that your antivirus software is up to date, boot your computer in Safe Mode and run the scan from there. Ensure that you note the name of any malware it finds, and check your antivirus vendor's web site for specific information on it. Your AV software may remove infected files, but it will not remove registry entries, and the like, that may be associated with the virus/malware.

 

[Guest]

Is there a way to identify the registry entries and remove them? If the
registry entries remain, will the virus return? NAV detected virus ... but
did not prevent the change to Task Manager, which is now disabled on my PC
.... and Ad-Aware says it cleaned the Spyware how can you be sure? I am
currently running both again in SAFE mode.

 

[randy]

Can you share where you found the "small file" and what you did to restore
the Task Manager functionality.