Control-Alt-Delete: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:43, 3 April 2008

Revision as of 01:28, 17 April 2008

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It is also a reliable method for bringing up the Task Manager (in Windows Server 2003 and older). All other keystroke combinations could potentially be exclusively tied up by a process that is stuck, but a user process is not able to intercept the Control-Alt-Delete sequence. It can be however disabled by Windows Group Policies. Ctrl+Shift+Esc also brings up the task manager in all Windows NT versions starting with NT 4.0, even if pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del is set to bring up the Windows Security dialog.

As a side effect, users who do not have physical access to the [[Computer power supply|computer's power supply]] and power/reset switches can be denied the ability to shut down or restart the computer, where previously (on MS-DOS and other variants of Windows) they could always use Control-Alt-Delete. However, as both the Task Manager and Windows Security have options for shutting down the computer, this operation can still be executed unless the entire system (including the WinLogon process) is unresponsive, or when explicitly denied through Group Policy. Also, it is sometimes impossible to access and/or see the Task Manager after a full-screen application has frozen, although the Windows Security dialog, which is on a separate "secure desktop" almost always appears.

== OS/2 ==<!-- This section is linked from [[Three-finger salute (computing)]] -->