Restore Task Manager, Regedit and Folder Options Disabled by Virus

Let’s face it. All of us have been infected by virus before. Even if you have anti-virus installed, you can still be infected by a new or custom virus that is not recognized by your anti-virus. Sometimes after removing the virus completely from our system, you’ll face new problems such as you can no longer bring up Windows Task Manager from CTRL+ALT+DEL. You get the error message saying “Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator”.



You think that it’s easy to fix this problem by going to Registry Editor but you can’t! You get the error message “Registry editing has been disabled by your administrator“.



Folder Options and even Show Hidden Files & Folder is disabled! How frustrating! Don’t worry, here’s how to restore your Windows Task Manager, Registry Editor, Folder Options and Show hidden files & folders.

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How To Make Vista Start, Run and Shutdown Faster.

While the discussion pertains to Vista particularly, the same applies to Windows in general too ! For a general user the first three are usually more than sufficient to make your Vista faster. The remaining are some more which a tweak enthusiast may wish to consider. Utilities like WinPatrol or Tune-Up Utilities can help you in most of the cases.

1. Restrict the no. of start-ups. Why have programs starting up when you dont really use them. Even those you use can always be started manually by clicking on the. I personally prefer not to have ANY starups. I click on my Internet Defense Suite manually, before connecting to the Internet. So decide for yourself which one's you really need as start-ups.

2. Disable services which one may not require. For example, if your pc is a stand-alone one, there may be sevral services which you can disable or switch over to manual mode. Auto-starting and closing down of services takes time & resources. These can be saved. BlackViper's Vista Service Configurations Windows Vista Service Configurations by Black Viper is an excellent guide to follow.

3. Reducing visual effects (eye candy). Right-click on “My Computer” > Properties > Advanced > Performance-Settings > Visual Effects > Adjust for best performance > Apply > OK.
To allow the themes and the glass effects, you may have to check on the boxes : enable transperant glass and use visual styles; this way atleast the spirit of Vista will be preserved- else be prepared for a really bland Vista ! Use your discretion. I know disabling all can actually negate the purpose of 'eye-friendly' Vista.

4. Ensure that boot defragmentation is enabled, so that files used during start-up are clubbed together.
Start Regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction . Select Enable from the list on the right.
Right Click on it and select Modify. Change the value to Y to enable and N to disable. Reboot.

5. Disable : "clear page file on shutdown" option. Cleaning the page-file on every shutdown means overwriting the data by zeros, and it takes time.
To clear/not clear page file you can apply this reg tweak. Back up registry before trying this.
Start->run->regedit [enter]
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Session Manager\Memory Management
Modify (if not present, rt click in open space and create) the Value Data Type/s and Value Name/s :
Data Type: REG_DWORD [Dword Value]
Value Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Setting for Value Data: [0 = Clear Page File Disabled / 1 = Clear Page File Enabled]
Exit Registry and Reboot.

6. Defragment your System Disk & Fine Tune your Registry. If you find the Vista's in-built defragger slow, you can try SysInternals Power Defragmenter Download Power Defragmenter 2.0.125 - Power Defragmenter takes defragmentation process to a whole new level - Softpedia which works on Vista too ! Use the freeware CCleaner to clear up your PC Junk and clean up the Registry. Compacting the Registry occasionally is a good idea too !

7. Generally people also recommend emptying the Prefetch directory once in a while. But Windows uses this directory to speed up launching
applications. It analyzes the files you use during startup and the applications you launch, and it creates an index to where those files and applications are located on your hard disk. Using this index, Windows can launch files and applications faster. Nevertheless clearing the Prefetcher say once a month is what I do !

8. Go to BIOS settings, by pressing del key during boot-up, and disable 'seek floppy drive' option. This saves time for those who do not use floppy drives. There are also some BIOS hacks like Enabling Quick Post, Disabling Boot Daly, etc but best to refrain from these.

9. Change Boot-Order Sequence : Normally, the bios is set to boot from floppy first, then CD and then Hard Disk. Changing the Boot-Order to be: Hard Disk first, then maybe CD/Floppy, could possibly "shave" a second, I guess !

10. Disable windows startup/shutdown/logon/logoff sounds. Go to control panel, sounds & audio devices, sound tab, in program events select 'no sound' for these events.

11. Disable the ScreenSaver if you dont need it. Rt-Click desktop>ScreenSaver>None>OK.

12. Fonts take time to load. Removing some can save on resources. But one must be careful in deciding which fonts to remove. If you delete some system fonts, you may b in for trouble. Tweak VI Pro is a good shareware to manage fonts. It uninstalls fonts without physically removing them. Open its help file. It lists down the system fonts which must not be deleted ! use the list; and then decide what to delete and what to keep.

13. To REALLY reduce your shutdown time.
Start Regedit. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control.
Click on the "Control" Folder. Select "WaitToKillServiceTimeout"
Right click on it and select Modify. the default value is ( i think) 12000.
Setting it to a lower 4 digit value,( say 1000) will make your PC shutdown faster, but you could end up losing data, so use this tweak judiciously.

14. Get rid of all the extra programs Windows Vista installs. You may not be using some like WLM, Calculator, Games, Meeting Space, Fax, etc. Go To Control Panel\Programs\Programs and Features > Turn windows On or Off and do the needful.

15. Go To Control Panel\System and Maintenance\Performance Information and Tools. On the LHS you will see options to Adjust Indexing options, visual effexts, power Settings, etc. These all help directly and indirectly.

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How to Terminate Full Screen Game or Software Process when Hang

Author: Raymond

The only computer game that I play is Counter-Strike Source, commonly shortened to CS:S or simply CSS. My desktop computer is powerful enough to handle the game but once in a while when I am playing the game half way, the game would just hang, sound is looping and nothing happens when I move the mouse or type anything on the keyboard. Weirdly, only the Counter Strike game hangs but my computer is still working fine. I know that my computer didn’t hang because when I press either the Num Lock, Caps Lock, or Scroll Lock keys at my keyboard, the LED light for the following keys would turn on and off.

I’ve tried pressing Alt+Tab to switch between Windows, Alt+F4 to close the active program, Ctrl+Shift+Esc to launch Windows Task Manager, Ctrl+Alt+Del to launch Windows Security dialog box, but NOTHING worked! The only way is to hard reboot the computer by pressing the reset button at the computer case. Hard resetting a computer is never good because it can damage the hard drive and cause data corruption.

Now I’ve figured a way to automatically terminate the game by pressing a shortcut key when it hangs.

Actually it is pretty simple and doesn’t require any advance level of computer knowledge. First you need to know what is the process name used by the game. Let’s take Counter Strike Source as an example. You can check the process name for the game by right clicking the CSS shortcut and select Properties. Go to the Shortcut tab to view the Target. As you can see, CSS process is actually hl2.exe (half-life 2).



Now you need to create a batch file that will kill the hl2.exe process when you simultaneously hit a combination of shortcut keys. Open Notepad (Start > Programs > Accessories > Notepad), and type the command line shown below.

taskkill /IM hl2.exe

You should replace the hl2.exe with the target of your game that you want to kill. Save the text file as killcss.bat or whatever you want to call it as long as the extension is .bat and not .txt. When you run the killcss.bat file, it should be able to close the game. Now we will assign a shortcut key to run the batch file.

Right click the killcss.bat file and select “Create Shortcut”. A new file named “Shortcut to killcss.bat” will appear. Right click at “Shortcut to killcss.bat” file and select Properties. Click at the Shortcut Key blank area and type any key of your choice. If you type the letter “L”, it will automatically assign Ctrl + Alt + L as the shortcut key to run the killcss.bat file.




One very more important rule is that the .bat file MUST be placed at desktop for the shortcut key to take effect.

When the game hangs in future, I just need to hit Ctrl + Alt + L key to kill the game so I can restart the game without hard resetting my computer.

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