Task Manager Loses Decoration!

[rovf]

64-bit Windows 7 .... In order to kill a program which was not responding anymore, I started the task manager (Control-Alt-Del, then Taskmanager). I had to klick on "kill task" twice to really kill it, but then it was gone. BUT, what also was gone, was the decoration and menus of my task manager! Instead, the Task Manager Window turned into what you can see on the attached screenshot!

In fact, I ended up with a "task manager" window, which I could not terminate (no window termination and hence no close button, no menus, no buttons for closing the task manager, nothing).

You can also see that there is no way to switch from "tasks" to "processes" or to the performance monitor anymore. All this gone too.

Trying to start again a new taskmanager did not work; it seems that Windows allows only one copy of task manager running.

Of course I can get rid of this problem by rebooting, but I wonder: How can such a situation possibly occur? I had never encountered this problem before.

 

[ethel]

Hello rovf, I cannot tell you how this has happened, but when I close the task manager I just press Esc

and to start the task manager, right click on the task bar, and start task manager. Are you able to press

Esc to close the current running task.

 

[DavidE]

Double-Click on the task manager window border, that should bring back the TM menu.
Double-Clicking on the task manager window border toggles the TM menu on/off.

 

[rovf]

Are you able to press

Esc to close the current running task.

Yes, thank you. Indeed, this terminates it! The only disadvantage is that when I restart it, it comes back in the same way (i.e. without decoration etc.), so the solution suggested by DavidE targets my problem better.

 

[rovf]

Double-Click on the task manager window border, that should bring back the TM menu.
Double-Clicking on the task manager window border toggles the TM menu on/off.

Ah, this was it!!! I guess that I somehow managed to double-click on the window border, and this made the menu to disappear. A really obscure feature! I have never seen before a window which would react on a double-click on its border.....