What was the point of ctrl alt del?

In 2000 Pro it took you to the Process Manager so you could kill off misbehaving things. The last time I used Windows full-time was Windows 2000 so I’m not exactly sure why it changed. They probably just added options.

If a program locked up your computer, and would not close, Cnt-Alt-Dlt would allow you to close that program, and see the number of processes currently running on your computer.

The highlighted option used to be what it would jump straight to.

It is still there:
You can enable or disable it

The history of the shortcut

David Bradley of IBM admits that he created the Ctrl-Alt-Del keyboard sequence, but gives credit to Bill Gates of Microsoft for making it famous
Control + alt + delete OR CTRL + ALT + DEL for short is very common and the most used key combination for Computers nowadays.
The inventor of the Control + Alt + Delete keystroke combination is David Bradley, and he’s one of the inventors of the original IBM Personal Computer, also the creator of many of Microsoft’s programs.
Earlier it was use to reboot the computers.
According to Bradley, he originated the idea for a keyboard-based shortcut for rebooting a system, and he wanted to a system to reboot itself without power cycling the hardware. It was worry of waiting for the Power-On Self Test (POST) routine to finish during each reboot of his software testing.
It was Control + Alt + Escape. Why was it changed? He later realises it can be done with single hand so changed it to Control + Alt + Delete.
As the single hand keystroke combination would be easy to accidentally hit with one hand, rebooting the system and losing all of a user’s work.
if U do so, it’s a finger salute to windows,LOL!
http://hightechpost.blogspot.com/2011/04/ctrl-alt-del-history.html

This has been around since before XP. Originally it was a way of saying “my computer is totally broken, please reset it”. A little later it changed, and started offering you the process manager, as if to say “computer totally broken? here is a snowballs chance in hell of fixing it by losing all progress before you have to restart”.

By the time it got to XP it was actually quite useful, you could close a process and maybe autosave would cover your ass.

I seriously doubt that Ctrl-Alt-Del is “the most used key combination for Computers nowadays”. I doubt it even as the most used key combo on Windows machines.

Ctrl-Alt-Del is not used for rebooting computers anymore… not modern Windows-based systems and certainly not anything UNIX-, Linux-, or mainframe-based.

It’s known as a Secure Attention Sequence, the point of which is so that a user pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del can be assured that the Windows operating system (rather than some other program) is responding to the key combination, and that it is therefore safe to enter a password.

Microsoft still likes users to make the Three Finger Salute for two things:
1. to bring up the logon prompt
2. to bring up a menu of options including: Lock this computer, Log off, Change password, and Start task manager.

Our first home PC ran Windows 3.2 which was not an OS, but an interface shell running over DOS (I believe it was DOS 6.0). When a program froze in Windows – and it often did – ctrl-alt-del gave the options of “reboot” or “command prompt”. If you knew what you were doing in DOS, sometimes you could locate your work file in the Windows directory, rename it and save it.

LIke @blueiiznh said, those keys were chosen as deliberately inconvenient and requiring both hands to prevent accidentally hitting them.

@johnpowell
@filmfann
@poisonedantidote
@Blueroses
Thanks for the answers but I was talking more about on login as apposed to the task manager.
@robmandu Ah I see thankyou :)

@robmandu Actually, Linux machines do often use Ctl-Alt-Del as a hotkey for “telinit 6”. I’ve only ever seen it work from the console and in a non-X VT.

You’re mostly right in that hardly anyone uses it anymore, but AFAIK it’s still an option (actually I just tested it on one of my thin clients and it still works as of Debian Squeeze).

@koanhead, that’s an interesting builtin hack… thx!

Just a silly bit of trivia, while David Bradley invented it, my husband’s uncle, Mel Hallerman, wrote it into the BIOS.

Crtl-Alt-Delete works (with some slightly different responses) on practically every version of MS-DOS and Windohs, including the current Windows 7.

Please, please forgive me if I sound really dense, there is a very good reason I don’t answer computer questions Is Ctl-Alt-Del is falling out of use in the general public?
I still have to use it everyday at work to get into my account, but our computers are ancient. They just this summer got rid of the old tan CRT monitors.

@linguaphile, if you’re using a Microsoft-branded OS, then no, it’s not going anywhere soon.

The rise of non-Microsoft OSes in the general public is still relatively early, but as Macs and Linux machines become increasingly mainstream, then Ctrl-Alt-Del usage will fall off.

@robmandu thanks! The way the OP worded the Q made me wonder if I was missing something! :)

I didn’t realize it was such an obsolete thing. I use it whenever a program freezes on my computer, and it brings up the little page that shows all of the things I have running and, more often than not, ‘Not Responding’ so i can end the task and begin the whole vicious cycle again.

It was designed as a “security feature” to prevent trojan horse from taking over your system. How so? I’m not entirely sure.