Task Manager/Regedit not working

[kiransal]

My task manager and regedit are not working. I have a Hp pavillion dv6000 series laptop running Windows Vista Home Premium os.

Whenever i press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, nothing happens. When i try to run task manager, it says that the administrator has disabled task manager and the computer restarts on its own. The same occurs for regedit. When i try to run it, it says it is disabled and the computer restarts without any prompt.

I ran Registry Editor of TuneUp Utilities 2009. I changed the values of DisableRegistryTools and DisableTaskMgr to 0, but it does not work. It changes back to 1 on its own.

I would really appreciate it if someone can help me with this problem as i use the task manager quite often.

Also please suggest a good free anti virus program as i cannot afford to use any paid anti virus program. As of now i use AVG Anti-Virus Free.

[SlimySlayer]

Avira Anti Vir is actually pretty good , the nag screen is irritating but nothing windows permissions can't fix. I find it far better than AVG, actually i found AVG the worst virus scanner ever (finding only 5 out of 200 viruses my old out of date Nortan 2000 found when I had a particulary bad virus experience) but I try not to judge on other peoples choices.

[drragostea]

Just a quick guess... are you running as Administrator on your Vista OS?

To your second question: There are many good anti-virus programs out there, paid or free:
http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=16242
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[kiransal]

Yep, I am running as Administrator.

[kiransal]

I have decided to go for ESET Nod32. Is it necessary to download ESET Smart Security or will ESET Nod32 3.0 Antivirus suffice??

Also i just realized that my Folder and Search Options have also been disabled. Please help me with this also.

[drragostea]

kiransal, your description of your symptoms hint that you may have a malware infection. This might explain the disabled regedit and Windows Task Manager. NOD32 is a standalone security program, with the Internet Security is a whole suite with all the protection features that ESET has to offer. I'm not familiar with the features because I do not use it. You might as well check it on ESET's homepage.

In the meantime, I would suggest you run a scan with Spybot-Search&Destroy and see if anything is flagged in red. In addition, is there any odd behavior that is happening on your computer? Any funny stuff (out of the ordinary)? Does AVG flag anything when you run a scan?

[kiransal]

As of now, my computer has not responded in any funny manner except for the restarts when i run regedit or task manager.

I ran a full computer scan using AVG but it just found some tracking cookies on my computer. I have deleted them.

I shall run a scan using Spybot and reply.

[drragostea]

Restarting by itself without user confirmation is pretty funny stuff to me.

Does Windows Task Manager pop-up, like can you actually see it visible, before the PC restarts? Or can you not access it at all?

[kiransal]

No the task manager does not show up at all. It just says that its been disabled by the administrator and then restarts.

[kiransal]

I ran a check using Spybot-S&D. This is what it gave me.