
Why Task Manager appears slower when you start it from the Ctrl+Alt+Del dialog? - girishmony
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/01/30/10261611.aspx
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jamesaguilar
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?

~~~
DrJokepu
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.

~~~
code_duck
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.

~~~
sriramk
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.

~~~
code_duck
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.

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AndrewDucker
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.

~~~
bwarp
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...](http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/windows-
nt-session.html)

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

~~~
AndrewDucker
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!

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

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ttt_
>> _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.

~~~
asomiv
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?

~~~
ttt_
>> _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.

~~~
andrewf
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.

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drKarl
Why not just using Ctrl+Shift+Esc?

~~~
keeperofdakeys
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.

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

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

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strictfp
> ..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?

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

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pasbesoin
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>

