zlacker

It's clearly meant to be part of the Ctrl-Alt-Del key sequence that interrupts Windows computers to bring up the task manager.

>>viccis+(OP)
But doesn't Ctrl+Alt+Del bring up the screen to switch users or sign out? "Task Manager" is one item in the list of options you get, but it's not the main one or anything, in fact it's the last:

https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/hzx6btMYEqZJfSAL3WVxXuW3-jw=/1...

>>crazyg+Di
Would have made more sense to say Ctrl+Shift+Esc since that just directly brings up the task manager. All in all I would say it is a slightly weird title, but I assume enough people get what they want to say with it.

>>crazyg+Di
The author may just be showing their age a bit. That's what Ctrl+Alt+Del does on modern versions of Windows, but from Windows 95 to Windows XP (inclusive) it directly launched the Task Manager.

>>aaronm+rr1
Ctrl+Alt+Del on an IBM PC or a compatible clone reboots the machine no questions asked. There's a dedicated reset button in case that fails.

Doing anything other than a reboot started with protected mode MS-Windows 3.1 IIRC (then marketed as "386 enhanced mode").

>>tosti+yS2
Yeah; in Windows 3.1, Ctrl+Alt+Del took you to a blue screen that allowed you to kill an unresponsive task (but didn't display a list of tasks; the Task List was launched with Ctrl+Esc), or told you there was no such task to kill if there wasn't.

Before Windows 3.1 it just rebooted the machine as you described.

Launching Task Manager was the 95 to XP behaviour, but NT behaved differently -- even Windows NT 4.0 (developed alongside Windows 95) took you to the security screen with Ctrl+Alt+Del (something that would later be ported to Vista), where launching Task Manager was one of its options. These OSes weren't used residentially though, until Windows 2000 attempted to merge their lineages and Windows XP finally cemented the deal.