What really happens when Ctrl Alt Del is pressed?

[Jimmy]

We have an application (specifically Oracle Forms through JInitiator on
I.E.7) which when opened for the first time everything runs really slow. The
response is really bad, e.g. when typing a character it displays on screen
after 2 secs.
Strangely after we press ctrl alt del and then cancel, everything starts
running normally.
We are running on Sunray thin clients with Windows terminal services.
The question is what does really happen when you press ctrl alt del? Why is
ctrl alt del fixing this problem?
Thanks,
Demetris

 

[John John (MVP)]

We have an application (specifically Oracle Forms through JInitiator on
I.E.7) which when opened for the first time everything runs really slow. The
response is really bad, e.g. when typing a character it displays on screen
after 2 secs.
Strangely after we press ctrl alt del and then cancel, everything starts
running normally.
We are running on Sunray thin clients with Windows terminal services.
The question is what does really happen when you press ctrl alt del? Why is
ctrl alt del fixing this problem?

It's called a Secure Attention Sequence, GINA monitors for this event
and it along with Winlogon are responsible for handling SAS events.

Interaction Between Winlogon and GINA
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa376105(VS.85).aspx

I don't know why initiating the SAS fixes the problem, you might want to
ask in a server group or in one of the Terminal Services groups.

John