You will get task manager disabled message in following two circumstances:

1. When you right click on task bar



2. When you run taskmgr.exe manually



So, why does this message comes?

There can be mainly two reasons:

1. Administrator disabled it manually.
2. Your computer might be affected by virus/malware.

If computer is affected by a virus, run an up-to-date anti virus scanner that will find out infected files if there are any.

After scanning for viruses, you can go through following process for enabling task manager-

For Windows XP Professional Users:

If you have Windows XP Professional, Click Start, then click Run and type in gpedit.msc:



And press OK. This runs the Group Policy Editor.

Once in the Group Policy Editor, expand in turn:

• User Configuration
• Administrative Templates
• System
• Ctrl+Alt+Del Options

You should see something much like this:



Double click on Remove Task Manager to change its setting:



It should be enough to click on Not Configured and then OK and Task Manager is available once again.


Note: This post helps to enable task manager in Windows Vista/ XP using Group policy/gpedit.