Can’t Turn on Windows XP Automatic Updates

This happened to me recently. Some forums said it was due to some program I installed or a virus…blah bleh bluh. I have uninstalled everything. Now I just have a browser and a media player. That’s it! Whatever the problem was, i don’t know if it was me or a program or greatmj, there’s a simple solution. Download dial-a-fix.  Unzip the downloaded zip archive, run dial-a-fix. Now, check  “Fix Windows Update” under the WU/WUAU section and press Go. It will fix everything, and the lil yellow-bandwidth-eating-updates-downloader will be back. And, I’m so happy.

Task Manager has been disabled by your Administrator Error

Annoying. Annoying. This error msg: “Task Manager has been disabled by your Administrator.” is truly annoying whenever you try to run the task manager (Shortcut: Press CTRL+ SHIFT + DEL , CTRL + SHIFT + DEL). Well, this happens when:

1. It truly is disabled by the admin.
2. Virus

If it’s the second case, just update your anti-virus definitions and do a full computer scan. The error will be rectified.

If it’s the first case, then do the following:

Go to START>RUN> type regedit.exe

(Cannot find run command? Click here)
Hit Enter.

First back up your registry (See: How to Backup your registry) then navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System.  In the right pane, double click DisabelTaskMgr and set the value to 0. Click Ok and restart the computer. This will (re-)enable task manager for all users. If you want to change the setting for one particular user, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System and do the rest of the steps as mentioned above.

That’s it. You’ll now be able to run task manager again.