Why Task Manager appears slower when you start it from the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog? | Hacker News Reader

Why Task Manager appears slower when you start it from the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog?

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52 pointsgirishmony41 comments

I love how this guy always pretends that nonintuitive things are completely obvious, even when they are actually the furthest thing from it. Definitely edifying to read his blog but I don't get the sense that he has much respect for his users, or to put it another way, a that he has an accurate perspective on how reality differs from people's expectations.

Clearly that's going to be slower, you doofus. It's almost as dumb as asking why an international package takes longer to arrive than a domestic one. What are you, some kind of moron?

This is the characteristic style of Raymond Chen. He is, in fact, a super clever genius and these things are actually completely obvious for him. I think his blog is a good reflection of the internal culture at Microsoft, and I mean a bunch of really clever people living in a bubble. And this post is nothing compared to some of his really technical posts. They're all very interesting reads however.

The answer he gave is only apparent due to his knowledge of Windows internals. He may or may not be a super clever genius... there's no way intuition or logic would have suggested the answer supplied.

As someone who knows Raymond personally and his body of work at Microsoft, I can attest to the genius part. His exploits in the Win95 days ( as one example), is part of MSFT mythology.

Surely, I've read his blog and agree he's as sharp a cookie as cookies get. I'm trying to refer only to conclusions that could be drawn from this circumstance.

He's not a user facing staff member and this is a blog aimed at very technical users only.

Why would he make the posts nice and cuddly? We're grown-ups and should be able to take it.

I have a lot of respect for Raymond Chen and have learned a huge amount from his blog. I wouldn't go slating him on this basis.

Even so, I tend to agree that it's not always as obvious to the rest of us - in this case it's not really clear that pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del switches anything to another user. Certainly the conclusion that the time is going into a video driver mode switch wasn't intuitive to me from the original statement, but I'm pretty sure I could figure out why an international package might take longer to arrive.

It is obvious, once he's explained the context - Windows has to move it from one desktop to another.

Well, it's not clear that it's slower. Shouldn't it be virtually instant? But I guess there's no easy way to explain every step that Windows does to switch the program to a new desktop, because if there was it wouldn't be so damn slow.

I read it with a completely different tone.

I've been hitting CTL-ALT-DEL since the 1980's. It has only been about a year since I even realized that Task Manager is available as a right click on the Taskbar - and I still tend to use the three fingered salute in the heat of the moment caused by something going amok.

He [most likely] correctly assumes that the typical person launching Task Manager is not knowledgeable enough to have all the relevant details at their finger tips. Particularly when focusing on an immediate technical issue.

BTW, once I read about the faster loading, I realized that that is why I have been subconsciously trying to use the Task Bar to launch Task Manager.

" It has only been about a year since I even realized that Task Manager is available as a right click on the Taskbar - and I still tend to use the three fingered salute in the heat of the moment caused by something going amok."

I also didn't know this. I've been ctrl+shift+ESC for the longest time instead.

I didn't know that CTL-SHIFT-ESC would bring it up until now.

"for his users"

As is evident from his other postings, "his users" aren't "users", they are other Windows programmers inside of Microsoft, who generally ought to either know better, or be able to figure it out themselves since they have all the tools to do so. That latter one in particular seems to cause him some frustration.

If he doesn't write with the kid gloves on, it's because "users" in the sense you meant are probably not involved and it's nobody in here but us chickens.

I love how people love to pretend that Windows is so completely and obviously broken, even when that's actually the furthest thing from the truth.

And when it's explained to them why something is the way it is with perfect reason, they attack the messenger, or just make more shit up to complain about.

Aren't you reading a lot into the OP's response? I don't see anything to indicate he has anything against Windows.

I'm reading into OP's response to the same exact depth as he read into Raymond Chen's (the blog's author).

What's interesting here is that I don't think most people think of the Winlogon screen as being in a separate user space than the main desktop.

I mean, it has to be, because it can switch users, but I don't think it's intuitively obvious.

They did a good job of hiding it all from the user if you ask me.

Windows' security model is actually extremely robust and handles this sort of stuff really well. Take a look at this for a description of how it all works underneath the hood:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/win...

I think people forget to give Windows a lot of credit that it is due.

Oh, absolutely. They don't know, and they don't need to know, unless they're wondering why it's slightly slower to go via winlogon to launch the process viewer.

And thanks for the link - that was fascinating. What a shame they bodged it the first time around and had to hack things to make it work!

And then when they work from (nearly) the ground up to fix it all, they catch all kinds of hell from Internet folk.

They did a good job of hiding it, yes. Unfortunately this is not something I want to be hidden from me.

>> Clearly, in order to get Task Manager running on your desktop with your credentials, winlogon needs to change its security context, change desktops, and then launch taskmgr.exe.

My question then would be why is that option even present on the "wrong security context"? I don't really see how it fits the other options present in that context. It's probably there just because they felt bad alienating the users that were used to the shortcut.

So they creep in functionality into a well known keyboard shortcut, then make the well known original functionality worst because of the new functionality. Then enters this guy and blames you for doing it wrong.

If winlogon runs in the same security context and the same desktop as explorer.exe then a key logger will be able to intercept all logins, and a screenshotter will be able to take screenshots of your login screen. Clearly you don't want that to be possible.

Or are you saying that they never should have made Ctrl-Alt-Del do anything else but starting the task manager?

>> Or are you saying that they never should have made Ctrl-Alt-Del do anything else but starting the task manager?

That's what I'm saying. Not that they shouldn't have made it do anything else per se. But that by doing so, the other features caused a negative effect on the main feature.

Ctrl-Alt-Del didn't have anything to do with logon or accounts or security, just task manager. Winlogon stuff should have had a different shortcut altogether, maybe Win-Alt-Del.

Wikipedia has more details, but essentially, in the Windows NT line bringing up all the security options has always been what Ctrl-Alt-Del does, with the task manager sometimes being presented as an option. Since about 1993.

Jumping straight to the task manager was something that happened under limited circumstances (fast user switching enabled, computer unattached to a domain) in Windows XP only.

So you can kill a locked up full screen application. Or any application happens to have fubar'd your entire desktop session. Happens all the time on windows.

In that case, couldn't Ctrl-Alt-Del try first in the current context, and in failing recur to the winlogon context?

I suppose it could. But i think the power of Ctrl-Alt-Del is that it switches to a different desktop (and context), as long as your graphics driver isn't borked, it should work.

Its basically the same idea as Ctrl-Alt-F2 dumping you to a different tty on a linux box even if X crashes. To my knowledge windows doesn't support that type of "multiple tty/desktop" sessions per user so rather than switching ttys within a single user context they have to switch to the system context.

Not saying its ideal, but rather just that access to the task manager is in there for this reason primarily, at least as far I can figure out.

Why not just using Ctrl+Shift+Esc?

Because most people don't know all the keyboard shortcuts. Casual users hunt about for stuff, they don't go and look up what the shortcuts are.

I'd argue that if most casual users see something isn't immediately available then they assume it's not there at all.

If most casual users see something isn't immediately available, then it is not there. For example, there is almost nothing on the MS Office Ribbon.

People are used to Ctrl+Alt+Delete, that brought up the task manager in Windows XP when using the welcome screen (the classic login gives the same behaviour as Vista and 7, although it is a window, and not a screen).

Then, considering keyboard shortcuts aren't discoverable, a lot of people probably don't know about Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

I own up that I didn't know about Ctrl+Alt+Esc. Although I'm very happy that I do now...

You learn it when you need the task manager of a remote server in Terminal Server.

Also in win95, 98 and ME. In fact, there it directly opened the Close Program dialog

Not quite the same. Unlike taskman, the Close Program dialog appeared on a screen by itself and all the other programs are suspended.

That's very true. I was mentioning it as a reason why (some of the older) folks use Ctrl+Alt+Del as a way to shut down programs.

CTL-ALT-DEL has been the way to attempt reset via keyboard for almost 30 years.

There is no telling what has been mapped to other keyboard combinations by the millions of applications which may be running under Windows.

> ..it's like sending a package internationally...

If it's a local package, why put it in the international mail box in the first place?

Because winlogon is foreign ground and your desktop is domestic, ctrl+alt+del takes you to foreign ground.

When on Windows, I just leave an instance of Process Explorer running. My own machines I have set to fire it up upon boot. (These are not servers.)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

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