Some of the latest malware seem to often alter XP settings like greying out access to the task manager (or starting task manager generates an error message like: task manager has been disabled by the administrator).
An added inconvenience is that 1 or 2 tabs from the screen display properties will also have disappeared (the desktop tab and the screen saver tab).
Whats most annoying, is that even after the infection has been cleared, these 3 problems still persist.
Well, easiest way to get them back to normal is to run regedit
Once regedit is running, navigate to:
HKCUsoftwaremicrosoftwindowscurrentversionpoliciessystem
Here you can alter 3 settings:
- DisableTaskMgr (change its value from 1 to 0)
- NoDispBackgroundPage (change its value from 1 to 0)
- NoDispScrSavPage (change its value from 1 to 0)