Control-Alt-Del takes an hour...

[Maineiac33]

Got a newly refurbished PC from Dell to replace one that
burnt up. It worked flawless for 3 weeks and still is
besides when you hit Cntrl-Alt-Del you will wait an hour
or more for the Windows Security box to pop up. I thought
the might be busy trying to process something else but
nope. I can move around in windows very fast and run
applications with no hesitation. Nothing has been
installed on this PC since it was fresh install 4 weeks
ago with W2k SP4 and patches. It's not even accesible to
the internet so that rules out virus's. Policies can't
have anything to do with it. What exactly is going on
when you hit those keys? Could this be hardware related?

 

[Alan Illeman]

Got a newly refurbished PC from Dell to replace one that
burnt up. It worked flawless for 3 weeks and still is
besides when you hit Cntrl-Alt-Del you will wait an hour
or more for the Windows Security box to pop up. I thought
the might be busy trying to process something else but
nope. I can move around in windows very fast and run
applications with no hesitation. Nothing has been
installed on this PC since it was fresh install 4 weeks
ago with W2k SP4 and patches. It's not even accesible to
the internet so that rules out virus's. Policies can't
have anything to do with it. What exactly is going on
when you hit those keys? Could this be hardware related?

Viruses just don't come from the internet, they can come
buried in software via the floppy or CD drives. Presumeably
the 'patches' were downloaded from the internet, so how do
you know that you weren't infected? Run AV software and
check out this system.

 

[f/f george]

Viruses just don't come from the internet, they can come
buried in software via the floppy or CD drives. Presumeably
the 'patches' were downloaded from the internet, so how do
you know that you weren't infected? Run AV software and
check out this system.

Don't forget to check for spyware too!

 

[Guest]

There is no chance of a virus on this machine. The
patches were not installed off the internet. There is no
spyware either. This machine has never been on the net.
It's a police department that prefers to have there
internal network TOTALLY isolated from the world. So any
other suggestions?

 

[Alan Illeman]

There is no chance of a virus on this machine. The
patches were not installed off the internet. There is no
spyware either. This machine has never been on the net.
It's a police department that prefers to have there
internal network TOTALLY isolated from the world. So any
other suggestions?

It wouldn't do any harm to do an AV scan. If your PC's even
have floppy drives, there's a chance of infection. Do it and
let us know. There is obviously something very wrong.

 

[George Hester]

I don't think it is an infection. It may be but I have never heard of it before and most AV software makers do pride themselves on knowing the symptoms of most viruses out there.

The ctrl-alt-del function is a computer based function. In other words without Windows you still have ctrl-alt-del. It was developed by IBM and is part of the definition of a PC. To me it is a motherboard problem.

 

[Alan Illeman]

I don't think it is an infection. It may be but I have never heard of it
before and most AV software makers do pride themselves on knowing the
symptoms of most viruses out there.

The ctrl-alt-del function is a computer based function. In other words
without Windows you still have ctrl-alt-del. It was developed by IBM and is
part of the definition of a PC. To me it is a motherboard problem.

--
George Hester


I've written DOS based programs where I have intercepted the
keyboard interrupt handler and made ctrl-alt-del do what I wanted
it to do. It has nothing to do with the motherboard.

Alan

 

[George Hester]

Yeah I just saw a Pascal program which does that. But it is definitely not a Windows function because without Windows that function still exists.

 

[Alan Illeman]

Yeah I just saw a Pascal program which does that. But it is definitely not
a Windows function because without Windows that function still exists.

--
George Hester

Any OS can intercept this key combination, and do what it wants to do.
Crt-Alt-Del in MS-DOS reboots immediately, but in Win2K a dialog
box comes up giving you choices - so it just depends on what code
is attached to the key combination.

 

[George Hester]

Hi Alan. Let me just ask this. If the OS did NOT intercept that key press
combination then nothing at all would happen?

 

[Alan Illeman]

Hi Alan. Let me just ask this. If the OS did NOT intercept that key press
combination then nothing at all would happen?

The Delete would still happen, if it was appropriate. I doubt that
e.g. a text editor would check for other keys, when it received
the Del notification, unless of course it was programmed to do so.

As I said before in some Dos programs where I intercepted the
keyboard handler, depending upon the application, I would simply
detect the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination and NOT pass it to the default
handler, i.e. this specific key combo would be ignored. I would
actually just detect the Del key and then check the current state of
the other keys which are stored as bit-flags in the Bios Data Area.

Alan

 

[George Hester]

Well now thank you very much.

 

[Rob Stow]

Hi Alan. Let me just ask this. If the OS did NOT intercept that key press
combination then nothing at all would happen?

On most modern systems, the BIOS will handle CAD until
and only until the OS is loaded.

In very broad, overly generalized terms:
1.) If a real-mode OS is loaded, then if the OS doesn't
intercept the CAD then the BIOS will still get the CAD
and do whatever the BIOS manufacturer decided - usually
a simple system reset.
2.) If a protected mode OS is loaded, then the BIOS never
gets a chance to see the CAD. The BIOS functions to deal
with the CAD are still there, but are never invoked unless
the OS decides to do so.

DOS is a real-mode OS. However, a protected mode shell
can be overlayed - and hence we get Windows 3.x and Win9x.

NT - including NT 3.x, NT 4, W2K, and XP - is a protected mode
OSes. There is no underlying real-mode OS like DOS.

With a real-mode OS, the application level programmer
has trivially easy access to intercept things like CAD.
Overlay that OS with the Win 3.x or Win9x protected mode
shell and the interception becomes a little trickier,
but still not too difficult. With the protected mode
versions of Windows (NT, W2K, XP) it is much trickier.
For example, with DOS and Win9x I simply did what I wanted
with CAD, but with WinNT4 when I wanted to intercept CAD I
had to use a keyboard driver that let me do so. (The
keyboard device driver was created by someone else - I've
never made a device driver.) I have yet to have a reason
to find out if the keyboard device driver trick works with W2K
or XP.