CTRL + ALT + DEL menu not rendered at the top

This is a terribly annoying problem. Whenever I play a game such as Garry's mod which is running on the old source engine and tends to freeze while joining servers, force quitting it with CTRL + ALT + DEL is completely impossible.

The issue is that whenever I press CTRL + ALT + DEL, instead of getting the menu, I get a black screen with a working cursor. The problem I think, is that the game is rendered on top of the menu, making it IMPOSSIBLE to open the task manager or perform any other action.

I noticed, that this behavior with some other games as well.

I would greatly appreciate any support. I feel like I am back in Windows 95 times, where a single frozen application forced me to restart the entire computer.

Thanks.

erik9631 said:

This is a terribly annoying problem. Whenever I play a game such as Garry's mod which is running on the old source engine and tends to freeze while joining servers, force quitting it with CTRL + ALT + DEL is completely impossible.

The issue is that whenever I press CTRL + ALT + DEL, instead of getting the menu, I get a black screen with a working cursor. The problem I think, is that the game is rendered on top of the menu, making it IMPOSSIBLE to open the task manager or perform any other action.

I noticed, that this behavior with some other games as well.

I would greatly appreciate any support. I feel like I am back in Windows 95 times, where a single frozen application forced me to restart the entire computer.

Thanks.

Your System Specs gives no information about the computer involved so guesses would be insufficient RAM/Random Access Memory, insufficient video memory or simply that the software involved isn't compatible with the computer.

Instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del have you just tried Ctrl-Escape to bring up the task manager?

hiphopper said:

Instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del have you just tried Ctrl-Escape to bring up the task manager?

Ctrl-Escape on windows 10 doesnt bring up task manager. Ctrl-Shift-ESC does. <-- Googled it. As far as my suggestion cant you Alt-Tab to go to the desktop, ive always done that or Alt-f4 to close. but im not sure if it will work on your game you can give it a try

Okay first of all.

It is DEFINITELY not a RAM problem. I have 16GB. The operating system is running in the background and is responding when I press CTRL + ALT + DEL, cause you can see the circle next to the cursor. The cursor responds as well..

Second, some people suggested me to use CTRL + SHIFT + ESC, I have not tried, but I will. Also this is not my problem. My problem is that the CTRL ALT DEL menu among which you can chose to turn on the task manager gives me black screen. Alt tabbing does not work with ANY software that is frozen in fullscreen, but that is normal.

On windows 7 this was not an issue. When nothing worked, ctrl alt del always worked.

On windows 10, CTRL alt deleting does not work, with some full screen applications.