3 ms·
That's more or less exactly it. Ctrl+Alt+Del causes a switch from the interactive desktop (WinSta0\Default) to the Winlogon desktop, which no other process has
by tallanvor 14y ago
That's more or less exactly it. Ctrl+Alt+Del causes a switch from the interactive desktop (WinSta0\Default) to the Winlogon desktop, which no other process has access to. Windows code also contains a special rule for interrupting the Ctrl+Alt+Del combination to prevent other applications from hooking into it and overriding the default functionality.
Technically it is possible to get other processes to run in the Winlogon window, but that requires messing around with security tokens, among other barriers.
- voltagex_ 14y agoI think either VirtualBox or VMware Workstation can detect Ctrl-Alt-Delete - it then asks you if you meant to send that to the guest VM. Any idea how that works if there's protection on Ctrl-Alt-Delete?
- jameyc 14y agoCtrl-Alt-Del fires an IRQ. As such, it can't usually be fired remotely - although some utils work around it by making API calls at the client end to trigger the behavior, depending on context. Some flavors of VMware hooked the IRQ on the host machine and responded to that (not sure about VirtualBox, never thought to check that.) They can send it to the virtual machine easily, as they are also providing the a virtual bios/hardware layer.
- DrStalker 14y agoVmware detects it, but doesn't stop it dumping you to the lock screen. The result is you hit control Ctrl-alt-del, lock screen pops upp, you get out of the lock screen, and there is a vmware popup saying "hey! You probably meant to use Ctrl-Alt-Insert instead!"