ok... my 4yr old daughter seems to know more about computers than i do.. she was attempting to put a CD game in and start it.. i dont know what she pushed but the D: came up with an error message that i got fixed.. however i tried to get into task manager (control+alt+delete) and it says it has been disabled by the system admin. How do i go about fixing this???

i never had this problem so i went a googlein'.
A lot of what i found points to a virus/worm type situation.
So update what ever you use for protection(uh huh huh) and do a scan
on your system.
The other thing i found was to go into your registry.
Don't know how comfortable you are with that.

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
Value Name: DisableTaskMgr
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = default, 1 = disable Task Manager)

I looked in my registry and do that show that key, but that might be because mine is working. So if it is there it should have the "1" for the value and needs to be changed to "0".

thats all i got for the moment.

ok well my daughter isnt that smart.. something the typed changed it, but heck if i know... virus detector is updated and scanned... still nada...

One of the pros here will probably give you a simple answer, but if you cannot figure it out, I would think you could do a system restore to a date before the incident in question, and that would put everything back as it was.

Just do a system restore to a date that you know it worked

reboot the computer then log into the computer as administrator. hopefully you set up a user account for her thats limited so she cant do any real harm to the computer. always set up a seperate account for kids.

she wasnt suppose to be on it. There is only one account and it is/was admin..
how do i go about doing a system restore? i know only enough about computers to get me in trouble.. :lol:

Start. All Programs. Accessories. System Restore, and it will give you the option of picking a date to restore to.

:agree:

System Restore is your best friend when it comes to XP. Just go to Start>Help and choose "Restore my computer to a previous state" or whatever. Roll back to a checkpoint date *before* the problem happened.

What exactly will system restore change?
Will it remove files or programs created or installed after the restore date?

Yes, it will.

It rolls back the Windows Registry to a previous date; the Registry is where all settings for Windows are stored.

So, it will effectively "uninstall" any installed programs (although their files may remain, the "mapping" of settings will be removed).

For more technical information which covers way more than I possibly could, please check out this page at the MS website (click on the "Understanding system restore" link in the right-hand pane):

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/app_system_restore_hss_overview.mspx