The Task Manager is one of the most useful tools in Windows, which is why many users the first thing they do as soon as they turn on the computer is to open the manager and always keep it in the background in case they need to use it. Now, we may suddenly find that the information is not updated. If you have found that the Task Manager is stopped or for any problem has been disabled, this is what we can do to fix it.
Task Manager is an application included in the Microsoft operating system that allows us to access all the processes that are running in real time on the system. In this way, we can see which applications are consuming the most resources at all times. Therefore, it allows us to monitor everything that happens in the equipment and how the resources of our equipment are being used at the CPU, memory, disk, etc. level.
Now, if at a certain moment we find that the Task Manager is paused , the information is not refreshed or for any reason it has been disabled , these are some of the steps or recommendations to follow to solve the problems.
If Task Manager is stopped
One of the characteristics of the administrator is that it is continually refreshing itself automatically to show us real-time information about what is running on our computer and the amount of resources that are being consumed. Therefore, if when we open the tool we find that this information is not updated, it means that there is a problem.
The truth is that there can be many reasons why this can happen, such as a system file has been damaged, a registry entry or simply that we have changed the update speed without realizing it.
And it is that within the options of the Task Manager, we can set the speed of updating the information. This is a feature that some users may not be aware of, but it is one that allows us to indicate how often we want the information on the running processes and resources used by each of them to be updated.
In this sense, if the update or refresh rate is set to low , we will see that the information is updated every time and can give us the feeling that it is stopped or suffers small cuts, while if it is Paused , then it will give us the feeling that it does not work since the information is not refreshed at any time.
To check the update speed of the Task Manager, all we have to do is open the tool and from the View menu option, we access the Update speed . This will show us four options, High, Normal, Low and Paused . If we find that the Low or Paused option is selected, all we have to do is change the update speed and set it to Normal or High, according to our preferences.
How to enable Task Manager
Sometimes we may encounter certain difficulties when opening the Task Manager, it does not open, a message is displayed indicating that it has been disabled, etc. The causes can be very different again, even a malware with which we have been infected may have disabled the administrator to hide its presence.
In any case, what we will have to do is enable the administrator again. Although it is advisable to carry out an analysis of our equipment before anything to eliminate any malicious software that we may have installed on our equipment.
To enable Task Manager, we can use the local group policy editor or the system registry, depending on the edition of Windows 10 that we have installed.
From the Windows 10 registry
If any application or malware has disabled the administrator at the registry level, we can check it by accessing the registry itself and proceed with its activation again. For it:
- We open a Run window, Win + R.
- We write regedit and press OK or Enter.
- We navigate to the path HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionPoliciesSystem
- We look for the DisableTaskMgr value
- We edit it and set its value to 0 to activate it again.
- We leave the registry
- We restart the team.
Now we can see if we can open the Task Manager on our desktop without any problem. As always when it comes to making any changes to the Windows registry, the ideal is to make a backup copy of it before proceeding with any change in case something goes wrong so that we can return to what we had before.
From the local group policy editor
If we have an edition of Windows 10 that has a policy editor and local groups, these are the steps to follow to enable Task Manager:
- We open a Run window, Win + R
- We write gpedit.msc and press Enter or OK
- We deploy the option User Configuration> Administrative Templates.
- Next in System
- Finally in Options Ctrl + Alt + Del
- We click on the Remove task manager policy .
- We mark in the next window as Enabled .
- We apply and accept the changes
- We leave the editor
Once this is done, we can already verify that pressing the Ctrl + Alt + Del key combination and choosing the option to open the Task Manager works and opens correctly.
Task manager does not work
As we have previously indicated, the reasons why the Windows Task Manager may stop working can be diverse. However, it can be difficult to know the exact cause and therefore, how we can solve it. These are some of the recommendations to follow to try to solve the problems with the administrator:
- Update Windows 10 : It is convenient to check if we have any update available for installation. The problem could be caused by a failure in the latest version of the system and that the subsequent update fixes it.
- Corrupted system files : Some system file may have been corrupted for some reason and hence Task Manager may not work. To try to fix it, we can run the command sfc / scannow, which will analyze all the files and if it finds any damaged it will try to replace or repair it.
- Check system image status : Windows DISM tool allows maintenance and repair of Windows images, therefore, it is convenient to launch the following commands to see if any damage to the image is causing problems with the administrator. To do this, you need to open the command prompt with administrator permissions and run DISM.Exe / online / Cleanup-Image / SancHealth and then DISM.Exe / online / Cleanup-Image / RestoreHealth.