I think I broke Task manager

OK. Can someone repost them then?

might not be viewed well. If they removed them it was because they wanted them off. To repost them would be putting something on that the admins want off

Ken

Try System Restore - one good thing is the backup also - if you want to fiddle this is the way out if things go wrong. HEY NOT READING much smarty those links are invalid.

System File Checker can restore individual files, open a command-prompt and try these two commands to restore just the two versions of taskmgr.exe.

Code:

sfc /SCANFILE=c:\windows\system32\taskmgr.exe
sfc /SCANFILE=c:\Windows\SysWOW64\taskmgr.exe

drfsupercenter said:

Hey, that fixed it!

drfsupercenter said:

So ProcessExplorer puts a Debugger key in there that screws with task manager?

The implementation of the replacement of Task Manager involves an image file redirect.

For fun, that will work for other programs as well. E.g., you can create a key called iexplore.exe, add a debugger reg_sz value with data of C:\program files\mozilla firefox\firefox.exe, and every time someone tries to launch IE, Firefox will be launched instead. More devious minds can likely come up with other antics...

Haha, so you just mean that the debugger value wasn't done correctly? When I opened it, it just had some random values, as if it got corrupted somehow. (But then again, ProcessExplorer came out in the XP days, it probably wasn't meant to work with Windows 7)

As for System Restore... I've never had good luck with that. It only causes more problems, especially if you get viruses. Generally I keep it turned off, but for now I'll leave it enabled.

As for that system file checker... that's nice to know. If I ever corrupt a system file again I might try that.

--EDIT--

Just curious, what's the difference between the file in system32 and SysWOW64? Is the second a 64-bit implementation of task manager? Because with that blue task manager, it's the same file for both folders...

I'm not sure what happened with the debugger value, as I've never experienced the reported behavior with Process Explorer. But it would appear that something of the sort took place, perhaps a result of some interaction with some antimalware software or the like.

Process Explorer has been around for, call it ten years. And the intent is certainly for it to work on Win7.

Files in system32 are 64-bit. Files in syswow64 are 32-bit (WOW stands for Windows on Windows, and wow64 is the subsystem for running 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS).

Hmm, that's interesting... so when would it use the SysWOW64 stuff? When you're running 32-bit programs? I figured it was the other way around, since it's called system32 and not system64.

The SysWOW64 stuff would indeed be used by 32-bit programs.

System32 is the actual system folder, and was presumably named over a decade ago (during the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit [system to system32]) without much consideration given to what would happen when 64-bit computing rolled around. So, legacy dictates that the folder (and some dlls) maintain the name with the '32' in it - system32, kernel32.dll, advapi32.dll, win32k.sys - in system32, they're 64-bit binaries, and in syswow64 the same named files exist, but are 32-bit binaries.

Ah, the joy of maintaining compatibility!!!