If you’ve recently migrated to Windows Server 2022 or applied the latest cumulative update, you might have encountered a frustrating error message when opening Task Manager or checking your startup configuration: “Startup items are not enabled on this system.” At first glance, this message is misleading. You know you have applications (antivirus agents, backup schedulers, monitoring tools) that are supposed to launch at boot. But Server 2022 insists they aren’t enabled—or worse, the entire startup tab in Task Manager is grayed out or empty.

For 90% of admins, the best fix is —just ignore it and manage startup processes via services. For RDS or VDI hosts, use the registry tweak above.

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