Task Manager greyed-out, no Desktop and no screen saver tabs
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)
Super Anti Spyware dude… it’s a bitch… and you can’t get around it… what you’re talking about is generally caused by a variation of Virtumonde otherwise known as WinAntiVirusPro or WinAntiSpywarePro sometimes ended with 2008 or 2009. ie… “your computer is infected with 30 viruses, click here for a free scan” lol.