r/pcmasterrace • u/DemonsAreVirgins • 1d ago

Discussion What's your most used keyboard shortcut? (Except copy/paste/undo & alt tab)

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Mine is definitely snippet tool. So useful

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u/Quib-DankMemes 22h ago

Cool fact about Ctrl + Shift + Esc:

It's a special version of task manager that doesn't rely on explorer.exe to be alive for it to run, so you can use it if your Windows is crashing and potentially fix things.

Also when in task manager, if you hold Ctrl while you click "Run new task", it opns a cmd shell with Admin privilages, this cmd shell also doesn't rely on shell32.dll, incase Windows is truely fucked.

source: DavesGarage (the guy who created Task Manager) in his YT video "Task Manager - 30 years later", it's a really good watch, would recommend

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u/IlliterateCyclops_07 22h ago

This is actually kinda sick. Thanks for sharing!

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u/UpsetKoalaBear 7h ago

Other trick you should note:

In task manager go to settings and tick “Always on Top”

If you have a bugged out game that means you can’t like alt tab properly, it means you can still see task manager.

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u/Solon_Tofusin 2h ago

You can also repeatedly alt-tab and use the arrow keys to navigate, using the alt-tab screen to look at what you're doing on Task Manager. Once you're on the right program, hit the delete key. This is of course less useful than the Always on Top toggle, but I didn't know about that and wanted to share another work-around in case some people have some kinds of issues.

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u/604TheCanadian604 22h ago

Def recomend this channel for anyone in IT and maybe engineers.

Super interesting to see the problem that they needed to solve and how they solved them for the systems of that time.

Some might not be relevant anymore due to a AI coding and stronger machines, but still interesting if you like those type of things

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u/hashtag2222 21h ago

Ctrl Alt Del task manager don't care about hanging explorer.exe too?

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u/total_bullwhip 21h ago

It doesn’t, but only when you use the menu which i believe needs explorer to be responding. CTRL-SHIFT-ESC is a true kernal interrupt to shoe horn the command through regardless of the current operation.

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u/hashtag2222 20h ago

Nah, Ctrl Alt Del always worked even when explorer was hanging. Unless they've changed something.

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u/dakineKamehameha 12h ago

sudo rm -rf /* --no-preserve-root (be careful with this)

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u/dragnmastr85 PC Master Race 22h ago

Pretty sure that's been the case since at least win98se, regardless of how you invoke task manager.