Where's the rest of my task manager?

June 12, 2007 4:31 PM

In the rare times I've needed to hit ctrl-alt-delete within the past few months, the task manager window pops up, but it lacks the little tabs at the top and the useful little X in the upper right that actually allows me to CLOSE the task manager. What happened?

I haven't been able to pinpoint the problem, and I'm getting frustrated. I've scanned the drive for viruses, spyware and the like (I use Avast!, Spybot and Ad-Aware), but no luck. I haven't installed anything else weird. I'm running Windows XP. I've never had a problem with it before this.

I have a screeenshot, if a visual is necessary.

I'd really hate to format/reinstall since it's such a pain, so I thought I'd ask here before I did. TIA!

Please, no OS wars. I'm fully aware of Linux.

posted by Verdandi to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Double click the border.
posted by alexei at 4:39 PM on June 12, 2007

Does Alt+F4 work to close the Task Manager?
posted by grouse at 4:42 PM on June 12, 2007

Someone actually just IMed me about it, but Alexei's got it right. Thank you to both of you. I can't believe it was so simple. *feels like an idiot*
posted by Verdandi at 4:45 PM on June 12, 2007

That happened to me a couple years ago and I couldn't figure it out for like two months. What a stupid feature.
posted by ageispolis at 4:55 PM on June 12, 2007

Seconding ageispolis.
posted by flabdablet at 5:10 PM on June 12, 2007

I can't believe it was so simple.

No worries. It's a fundamentally flawed design:

1) Way too easy to do accidentally.
2) Completely undiscoverable how to undo, since there's no menu for hints.
posted by smackfu at 5:31 PM on June 12, 2007

Also, nothing else behaves like that. Stupid.
posted by tumult at 6:45 PM on June 12, 2007

Wow, a feature I didn't know about! Note that you can still switch tabs easily even when the Task Manager is in this state. Just hit Ctrl-Tab. Escape to close.
posted by kindall at 6:48 PM on June 12, 2007

I've got exactly the same problem, will try it as soon as I get to the machine in question - thanks for asking the question Verdandi!
posted by ceri richard at 10:45 PM on June 12, 2007

Never experienced it, but glad I know how to fix it, cuz it sounds incredibly exasperating - thanks alexei!
posted by your mildly obsessive average geek at 11:13 PM on June 12, 2007

Interesting. Why the hell would this "feature" be available? I can't think of a single good reason.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:55 AM on June 13, 2007

It can be useful. Getting rid of the tabs and menus and title bar allows you to make the window much smaller, and then you can keep it in the corner of your desktop as a constant monitor. Some of the tabs also have different views in this mode, like Perf tab only shows the graphs and not the memory numbers.
posted by smackfu at 7:52 AM on June 13, 2007

This is great- thanks for posting it.
posted by Four Flavors at 4:35 PM on June 13, 2007