Talk:Control-Alt-Delete: Difference between revisions

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I'm not sure the term "hook" is used here correctly. A hook is usually something a piece of software provides to allow it to run other software that wasn't anticipated when the first bit was written. The second part is "hooked into" the first. Ctrl-Alt-Del may cause a routine in BIOS to run, but that wouldn't be a hook. In fact, the modern events that occur on Ctrl-Alt-Del is more accurately described as a hook into this original routine than the other way around. Clear? Probably not... [[User:GRAHAMUK|GRAHAMUK]] 13:15, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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:Hi, I defer to you on whether hook is the correct term here. Since you seem to be well informed about such things, perhaps you create a stub on hook.

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::This command is a hook to the BIOS of a PC running DOS;

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: is the qualification "running DOS" really necessary? The CAD "hook" is there in the PC, in the BIOS, no matter what OS is running. Or not? Presumably it is also there under Linux (but what Linux does with it I don't know). (FWIW, I use OS/2 where CAD still has its original function.) Cheers, -- [[User:Viajero|Viajero]] 13:44, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

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::I think technically, the command causes an [[Interrupt]] in the BIOS. But as Tarquin says below, this whole page might be better off merged under [[Three-finger salute]] - although I note that doesn't refer to BIOS interrupts either. I may even be wrong that that's what it does... - [[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]] 19:01, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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What do we do about this article and [[Three-finger salute]]? Merge, or keep this as a particular case of Three-finger salute? -- [[User:Tarquin|Tarquin]] 13:49, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

== Hard reboot? ==

I'm pretty sure that control-alternate-delete causes a soft reboot, and the page on [[soft reboot]] seems to confirm this.

[[User:TJSwoboda|TJSwoboda]] 23:14, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

== Some rather verbose justifications and apologies. ==

*In an attempt to avert any conflict between myself and [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]], I'd just like to explain why I made some of the edits that he has "reverted" (in reality, I consider them more in the line of "corrections", and am thankful for them):

** The distinction I was drawing attention to was between a "MS-DOS and real-mode systems" and "Windows 95 and its successors". While I couldn't quite remember, I had the feeling that Windows 3.x was sufficiently reliant on MS-DOS that it would fall in the former category; as such, I renamed the latter. Obviously, with the inclusion of Windows 3.x in the latter section, the original heading ("DOS-based Windows") makes sense, but the distinction I labelled wasn't "false", I was just labelling the distinction that previous editors had made. Now you mention it, I think I do remember blue screens in relation to ctrl-alt-del, so thanks for that.

***[[Windows 95]], [[Windows 98]], and [[Windows Me]] all rely upon DOS, too. The problematic section title is, in some ways, the first one rather than the second one. There's simply no way to explain the complexities of DOS extenders and Virtual 8086 mode in a section heading. [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]] 19:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

** The "32-bit" mention was, in retrospect, unnecessary, and I know it's a vaguely debatable point; I just wanted to draw a clear line between two very different generations of Windows, and that's one short-hand commonly used for that distinction.

***"vaguely" is an understatement. I was there in the mid-1990s when these debates were in full swing. It's ''very'' debatable. There were then (and still are now — I encountered someone making the same old debunked arguments a couple of months ago.) people who blithely believed the Microsoft marketing blurb, which to those who understood operating systems was quite inaccurate. [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]] 19:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

** My point about "''normally'' only the superuser" having permission was intended to convey the rather subtle point that there are all sorts of ways of programmatically ''granting'' superuser ''rights'' - as a simple example, if I type "[[sudo]] halt", I may have been granted the right to issue ''that one command'' as "root" in <tt>/etc/sudoers</tt>. If so, I can programmatically halt the machine without "being" the superuser, except in the most [almost pedantically] technical sense. Like I say, it's a subtlety, and my edit didn't really convey that.

***That <code>sudo</code> is involved doesn't change the basic fact that it is a process running under the aegis of the superuser account that is performing the actual task. In contrast, one doesn't even need to be logged in, and running any processes at all, in order to use Control-Alt-Delete. [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]] 19:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

** I only removed that link to [[Microsoft Windows]] because it "felt like" a duplicate - I now see that that exact article hadn't been linked before, but it still feels a bit redundant with all the earlier mentions. Plus, now I look, it mentions "DOS and Windows" in a paragraph about Windows NT, so it's only really referring to "non-NT versions of Windows". I hope the new wording seems better.

***Actually, it's referring to a rather woolly notion of "whatever Microsoft operating system the Windows NT user used before". Windows NT users will have upgraded from operating systems where Control-Alt-Delete soft rebooted the system. I know that some Windows NT users upgraded from DOS. The structure of Wikipedia currently is that [[Microsoft Windows]] is the main article and there are articles on [[Windows 95]], [[Windows 98]], [[Windows 2000]], and so forth. It's unfortunate that Wikipedia does not make a higher-level subdivision between "DOS-based Windows" and "Windows NT". (Which reminds me: I must correct the errors that implied a single line of development, instead of two that ran in parallel for over a decade, that I saw in [[DOS]] the other week.) [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]] 19:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

** Finally, the introduction: I feel it's important that we introduce what this article is actually about, and how it relates to the old use for [[soft reboot]]; hence I've reinserted the mention of "More advanced operating systems" (an ugly phrase, but I can't think of anything better) doing more complex things with it. Otherwise, there's no justification why there isn't an article discussing how different applications treat "Control-A" (OK, that's a [[Devil's Advocate|deliberately silly example]], but without the explanation the "introduction" doesn't do much "introducing" of what the article's there for).

*** It is an ugly phrase. "Operating systems that don't use the BIOS to drive the keyboard" is more correct, albeit that I am loathe to put that into an introductory section. The original point was merely that the keyboard combination comprises the keys that it does as a safety precaution because the action invoked as a consequence of it was a drastic one. Of course, that led on to the point that with the change to the keyboard, this deliberate difficulty went out of the window (which evoked comment at the time). [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]] 19:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

* On a slightly seperate note, a quick look around turned up some slightly odd things about <tt>system.ini</tt> - one website stated that "LocalReboot defaults to Off on Windows 95" (which seems rather bizarre); and another referred to a different setting called something like "KeybdReset", which seemed to have exactly the same purpose. I'll have to look again, and work out what's going on with that, but neither was a Microsoft reference, unlike yours, so they could just have been erroneous.

** Microsoft KnowledgeBase articles aren't always reliable. (One of my most widely cited articles contains a harsh criticism of a Microsoft KnowledgeBase article for its inaccuracy.) However, I have little reason to suspect the accuracy in this regard of the one cited. There's a lot of other, contradictory (and self-contradictory), information circulating about those settings, which I turned up as you did, but a lot of it appears to be distorted due to the [[chinese whispers]] effect. [[User:Uncle G|Uncle G]] 19:43, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC)

* Oh dear: you can tell when I'm tired, because I become more verbose in discussions! Sorry. <tt>:-/</tt> - [[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]] 01:27, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC) (where UTC==localtime)

== Windows XP ==

:''In Windows XP, if a user is logged in and the computer is joined to a workgroup, bringing up the Task Manager to allow the user to terminate errant processes''

Not on my system, Windows XP Professional SP2, at home (in a workgroup) or in the office (on an NT ___domain) it doesn't. It brings up the security dialog (i.e. hitting enter locks the system from use by other users).

I have thus removed this assertion until such time as it is amended, or qualified - assuming it isn't outright false.

[[User:Zoney|'''zoney''']] <font size=+1 style="color:green;">&#09827;</font> [[User talk:Zoney|'''talk''']] 22:08, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, the behavior varies based on some Registry values that I have yet to play with. At home, with XP Pro SP2, it will bring up Task Manager. At school, with XP Pro SP2, it will bring up the Windows Security (that's funny) dialog, where you can lock the system, or bring forward Task Manager to terminate an errant task. --[[User:DolphinCompSci|DolphinCompSci]] 20 December 2005

It really depends on how windows is setup. You can actually use gpedit.msc to change the way windows reacts to the 3 finger salute. BY default, when windows is part of a ___domain, it assumes an enterprise function and goes to a security dialog. When its not part of a ___domain and active directory, it opens the task manager. [[User:Wiki fanatic|Wiki Fanatic]] 05:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

On Windows XP, it depends on if the welcome screen is enabled or not. On a network/___domain, the welcome screen is automatically disabled, and can not be turned on. If not on a ___domain, then the user has to select whether they use the XP welcome screen or the "classisc" login prompt, where they type their username. When the welcome screen is off, the securtiy dialogue is displayed. When it's on, you automatically get the task manager. If you go to control panel, then click "User Accounts", then "Change the way users log on and off", you can switch the welcome screen on or off. --[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 16:39, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

== Picture ==

What exactly is the point of the picture/comment? This makes no sense at all to me...

[[User:CJHung|CJHung]] 14:38, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

:That picture is awesome! [[User:TitaniumDreads|TitaniumDreads]] 16:47, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

== Jab at windows incorrect ==

David Bradley's line regarding gates making ctrl-alt-del famous was not a jab at windows or its percieved instability. It was a comment on how you log on to windows...via ctrl-alt-del.

Watch the video of David Bradley mentioning this:

http://blogcastrepository.com/blogcasts/39/bill_gates/entry414.aspx

[[User:Wiki fanatic|Wiki Fanatic]] 04:55, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

== Mac OS X Beep ==

I tried using Ctrl Alt Del (Ctrl Option Del) on my iMac G5 with Mac Os X 10.4 and it doesn't beep. Please verify so we can edit.

[[User:Arjunm|Arjunm]] 05:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

What is happening on an Intel-based Mac? Anyone can check that? [[User:Lofote|Lofote]] 22:47, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

== Linux [[security]] risk? ==

''The keystroke can pose a security risk, in that a user can place the machine into single user mode after the machine reboots. Single user mode does not require a password in some distributions and works in superuser mode, which would in effect give the user unrestricted access to the machine.''

What distributions are these? This is not true for any of the following distributions: Debian, Redhat, Fedora, Slackware, Ubuntu, and Mandrake. I'll remove the statements in a few days unless somebody minds. Hypothetically, even if you found one such distribution, hard-rebooting the machine would have the same affect. '''~a''' ([[User:Arichnad|user]] • [[User talk:Arichnad|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Arichnad|contribs]]) 21:23, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

== Control-Alt-Delete vs. Ctrl+Alt+Delete ==

I find it confusing that the Control-Alt-Delete article refers to the keyboard shortcut, where Ctrl+Alt+Del refers to the web comic. As the keys on the keyboard are actually "Ctrl", "Alt" and "Delete", wouldn't it make most sense to name this article "Ctrl+Alt+Delete"? It is possible that on other keyboards "Ctrl" is spelled out, making the current naming reasonable, but when I first looked for this article, it was confusing. Also, windows uses "+" signs between the words, not dashes (-).

--[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 02:45, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

:It doesn't really matter; you can argue for and against easily.

:The key's name is "Control", for example, regardless of how it may be labeled on keyboards (just like Page Up is Page Up, even if it's labeled "PgUp"—on the other hand, [[SysRq]] is SysRq, even if it's really the "System Request" key). The name "Ctrl+Alt+Delete" would be inconsistent: why "Ctrl" and not "Control", but "Delete" and not "Del"?

:Writing key combinations with hyphens has a long tradition; using "+" (although perhaps more logical) is actually fairly recent. But here, too, it matters little. Either would work. [[User:JRM|JRM]] · [[User talk:JRM|Talk]] 17:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

It might make more sense just to have one page that Ctrl+Alt+Del and Control-Alt-Delete and all the keywords that redirrect to either of those pages go to ''one'' page, from which you can choose "Control-Alt-Delete (Keyboard shortcut) or Ctrl+Alt+Del, the comic.

--[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 16:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

:I think [[Control-Alt-Delete]] and [[Ctrl+Alt+Del]] can both stay where they are (since it's just two articles and they refer to each other clearly), but a separate [[Control-Alt-Delete (disambiguation)]] to redirect all the redirects to is a good idea. [[User:JRM|JRM]] · [[User talk:JRM|Talk]] 17:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Do you know how to set up the [[Control-Alt-Delete (disambiguation)]] page? I don't. If someone could tell me how, or do so themselves, I'd appreciate it. (I don't have a ton of experience with the technical side of wikipedia) --[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 18:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

:I have to cite laziness on my part here. See [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation]]. Basically, you just create that page to list the two articles. Then use "What links here" (in the toolbox to your left) on both [[Control-Alt-Delete]] and [[Ctrl+Alt+Del]]. Change every redirect so it points to the newly created page instead, and change every page that erroneously links through a redirect to point to the correct page (either [[Control-Alt-Delete]] or [[Ctrl+Alt+Del]]). When you're done, the only pages linking to the disambiguation page should be redirects.

:Don't worry if you screw something up; others will help/correct you. [[User:JRM|JRM]] · [[User talk:JRM|Talk]] 23:50, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I made the Control-Alt-Delete (disambiguation) page and re-linked all of the redirects. However, I left all other links alone, as they are meant to refer to one article or the other. If I did anything wrong, I appologize in advance. --[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 19:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

:Excellent job. I re-linked some articles that were now going to the disambig page to go directly to the article they really wanted. You just made your first disambig page, how does it feel? :-) Keep up the good work. [[User:JRM|JRM]] · [[User talk:JRM|Talk]] 22:23, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. --[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 00:20, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I believe that this article should be Control-Alter-Delete, as Alt obviously refers to Alter. I don't know why everyone calls it Control, Alt, Delete. You don't call Control and Delete Ctrl (Ktrol) and Del, do you? Alt+anything is an alter key.

Guest

I always thought "Alt" was for "Alternate", not "Alter". However, everyone I know says "Control, Alt, Delete. The keys are marked "Ctrl, Alt and either Del or Delete. That's why I said it should be Ctrl+Alt+Del. It doesn't really matter that much; anyone looking for the article will find it eventually. --[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 18:49, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

== A program that prohibits Ctrl+Alt+Del ==

Believe it or not, there IS a program that PROHIBITS you from using Ctrl+Alt+Del!! Technology Enhanced Student Assessment (TESA) is a testing program used by the state of Oregon (USA) Department of Education. When TESA is running and Ctrl+Alt is pressed, the computer beeps. When Ctrl+Alt+Del is pressed, nothing happens. Exiting the program is not permitted without a password (only teachers get the password). This makes me think that ctrl+alt+del is prohibbited so that a student can't use task manager to close TESA and then open a word document, etc. to look at answers saved previously or to otherwise cheat. Regardless of the reasoning, I think that a little more research could be done, and this may be worth mentioning in the article.

Go to this website [http://63.89.64.197/oregon/index.jsp] to see what TESA looks like. You need a bunch of information that isn't available to the public to go past this page, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like. (Untill you pass the point above, you can exit without a password) This may be a verbose comment, but I think it's pretty interesting.--[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 18:46, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I only see a website there no program!? Even if there is such a program, it can only work under Windows NT-based systems, if this is an adminstrator calling the program since you would have to replace GINA to disable CTRL+ALT+DEL. [[User:Lofote|Lofote]] 22:52, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Ya know, now that I think about it, it may be that it is not TESA itself that prohibits CTRL+ALT+DEL, it's the browser that we use to open the page. I believe it's called something like Vanguard Browser, I'm not positive. Of course, as the page above can be accessed by Internet Explorer, FireFox or a similar program, you would be able to just close the window. However, if a seperate application is used to open the page, it's possible that the website itself has nothing to do with it. I have no real way to check this out untill school starts again, so I'm sorry I don't have more info. As for only on Windows NT, it does work on both our windows 2000 and Mac OSX computers. (We STILL haven't upgraded to Windows XP.)The whole thing is pretty odd, but I KNOW that you can't do CTRL+ALT+DEL when testing. --[[User:Kormerant|Kormerant]] 00:19, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

== I've got a good idea! ==

I think a list of popular culture references, and video game references to Ctrl+Alt+Delete, such as in the Halo games, or the song "Perfect World" by Billy Talent. --[[User:70.77.11.85|70.77.11.85]] 20:30, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

: Sounds like it'd be a good addition to the article! This is Wikipedia, so you can [[WP:BB|be bold]] and add it if you like. --[[User:H2g2bob|h2g2bob]] 19:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

== external link on jab is broken ==

The external link in the line: "David Bradley is also known for his good-natured jab at Bill Gates" that links to "http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3877405527381660901" shows a "Google Video Error" page.

== Are you sure? ==

The new image of the Vista "Task Manager" looks to me like the Windows Security dialog, because you can change password, lock computer, etc. OR click to open the task manager. If it is the task manager, why do you have to click to open what's already open? I think it should be renamed. Also, can anyone get a Vista image of the ''real'' task manager?

Your right. I have edited it. As for the vista task manager image, I'll get a real one once I go home. My work laptop has XP.

--[[User:Wiki fanatic|Wiki Fanatic]] | [[User talk:Wiki fanatic|Talk]] 08:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

== Windows Security image? ==

Can someone get a screenshot of the Windows Security Dialog, the Windows Logon Screen requiring Ctrl+Alt+Del or some other screenshot representing one aspect or another of Ctrl+Alt+Del for Windows XP? Since this is the current operating system used by most windows users, I think it would be appropriate to have a screenshot of what people use it for. I would take the shot, but I can't get one just using the print screen key, and I don't have screenshot software. Or would it be acceptable to upload one that I found on the [http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnbda/html/mcsad07.gif Microsoft Website]? I think this would be more appropriate than the photo of a protester with a Ctrl+Alt+Del sign. --[[User:Tech Nerd|Tech Nerd]] 01:56, 7 November 2006 (UTC