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Comment by undershirt | Hacker News Reader

CTRL+SHIFT+ESC does what CTRL+ALT+DEL used to do -- goes straight to the task manager.

CMD+ALT+ESC on mac, btw.

> CMD+ALT+ESC on mac, btw.

That goes to Force Quit, whereas CTRL+ALT+DEL on old Windows used to open the real task manager the Mac equivalent of which would be Activity Monitor (sadly, there doesn't seem to be a default shortcut to it).

    CTRL+ALT+DEL on old Windows used to open the real task manager

Really? Define "old Windows?"

I have vague memories of the "three finger salute" invoking a reboot on Windows 3.1, as well as MS-DOS. (early 1990's)

It wasn't supposed to be an insult. My last Windows experience was XP and the TFS invoked the Task Manager on that OS. I never used 3.1, so I don't know. But the GP seemed to suggest that the Task Manager shortcut has changed in newer versions.

Windows 95, 98, and Me used Ctrl+Alt+Del for Task Manager.

Windows NT, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, etc use Ctrl+Shift+Esc for Task Manager, while Ctrl+Alt+Del was reserved for the lockscreen.

What was confusing, though, was that Windows XP (and ONLY Windows XP, not 2000 or Vista) in default settings would use Ctrl+Alt+Del for Task Manager, although in domain mode Ctrl+Alt+Del would still open the lockscreen.

95, 98

In Windows 3.1, CTRL-ALT-DEL will allow you to kill a hung application. If no application is hung, it will tell you to press CTRL-ALT-DEL again to reboot.

Check this by Raymond Chen where he explains better than me: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2013/02/08/1039...

I'm stuck in a cycle of continuously rediscovering this, then forgetting it again almost immediately because CTRL+ALT+DEL is so damned ingrained.

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