Home computer use: Ctrl-Alt-Del w/ Windows 10
Self-tutoring about home computer use: the tutor makes an observation.
This article isn’t based on specs, but rather on my own recollections. Therefore, it may not line up with other peoples’ experiences, or even what’s meant to be true. Nonetheless, I’d say these observations are true in my case.
Ctrl-Alt-Del I recall being helpful with a frozen computer long ago. Then, in Windows 7, all it did was open the task manager – which wouldn’t necessarily work if the computer was frozen. That’s how I recall it, anyway.
Yet, I didn’t miss Ctrl-Alt-Del much with Windows 7, because Windows 7 hardly ever crashed. Our last Windows 7 installation we used from 2009 to 2020 – its hardware finally started to give way. Until then, that computer was almost as reliable as a Linux one.
Last night this Windows 10 computer seemed frozen. It’s our main desktop; I didn’t want to do anything destructive. I left it “as was” and walked away, thinking when I returned it might respond. Perhaps it was in the middle of an update or something (although it wasn’t saying so, if it was).
About half an hour later I returned to the computer: still, it was frozen. Realizing I’d have to unfreeze it somehow, I keyed Ctrl-Alt-Del, more from muscle memory than any other reason. The combination had worked unfailingly from the late 90s to the late 2000s. Yet, even as I keyed it last night, I didn’t expect much.
Yet, I was pleasantly surprised: Ctrl-Alt-Del did indeed wake the computer. It gave me a menu, of which one option was “Shut down,” which I exercised. I restarted it a few minutes later; it’s worked great since.
Therefore, my observation is that, while Ctrl-Alt-Del may have lost potency in Windows 7 (or at least on the Windows 7 devices I used), it’s regained it with Windows 10.
Source:
Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.