Task manager won’t open but isn’t disabled

Windows XP. The problem I had was after removing viruses from a client machine, task manager would not open. Control-alt-del did not work, right clicking the taskbar and choosing task manager did nothing, and browsing to C:\Windows\System32 and running taskmgr.exe did nothing. It wouldn’t even pretend to pop up.

Renaming taskmgr.exe to taskmgr2.exe and running it proved to me it wasn’t the file itself. The fix I ended up with is below:

Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\

Delete Key File: taskmgr.exe

Soon as this key was deleted everything is back to normal and happy as can be. I had tried .reg fixes from Kellys Korner XP to no avail, trying to reset taskmgr, restore permissions to run it etc.
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