Windows 7 Task Manager Does Not Open

Hi Everyone,

Here is my problem, maybe you can help me with it:

I have Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit, when I run Task Manager the icon for it appears in the far right part of the taskbar, but the actual window for Task Manager does not appear.

In case you are wondering:

Right clicking the icon does nothing.

I have tried running it different ways - CTRL ALT DEL, right clicking the task bar and clicking Task Manager and running it from the Run Window - the result is the same.

Running it several times results in several icons.

No error message is displayed when running it.

It used to run fine before.

I have an up to date version of Avast! running all the time.

I don't have two monitors set up for the computer with only one actual monitor which might result in the window being shown in the 2nd nonexistent monitor which I have seen being a possible issue talked about in other forums. And either way this would not explain why right clicking the icon doesn't work.

I don't have the Malware listed in the READ & RUN ME FIRST, I ran a Malware scan using Malwarebytes and it didn't find anything.
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Thanks,

Paglew

 

Maybe try typing taskmgr.exe in the start/search bar
Hold ctrl+alt+shift while clicking the taskmgr.exe entry at the top of the search window.

Not sure if it will make a difference.

 

what happens when you ctrl+shift+esc ?

 

Did some googling and I'm thinking that it could be malware/trojan if the above suggestions don't help you. Run the free MalwareBytes scan http://www.majorgeeks.com/Malwarebytes_Anti-Malware_d5756.html and see if it comes up with anything. If nothing found then go to the malware forum, do the READ & RUN me first: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 prior to posting in that forum.

Not sure if it's malware though.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone, i ended up running an avast! boot time scan over night it found a number of infected files, which is a little surprising because avast! was running when I downloaded all those files, and now the task manager works fine. I am still not 100% sure what the problem was it could have been the malware I suppose.

Also an interesting thing happened when Windows started after the boot time virus scan it claimed that it was not genuine even though it is. On subsequent restarts it didn't say anything and it shows windows to be activated in the system control panel window... :confused


Cheers,