At least on Windows XP that combination opened the Task Manager directly, without any delay.
I want to see the Task Manager when I press CTRL+ALT+DEL, and not that useless window which I never use anyway.
How can I change this behaviour?
PS. I know CTRL+SHIFT+ESC opens Task Manager too, but I dont like it. (harder to use, and also because I have used the other method for ~20 years now).
This doesn't seem to be possible. In Windows NT (which doesn't include Windows (1/2/3).x, 9x or ME, but does include Windows 2000, XP, and all versions since then), the security dialog seems to have always been the default behavior of Ctrl+Alt+Del; XP was the only NT operating system where it was even possible for it to launch the task manager directly (and then only if the Welcome Screen was enabled, as was default on home PCs but often not on office machines joined to domains). This was a special case, present only in Windows XP, and removed in Vista.
For security reasons, Ctrl+Alt+Del is handled directly by the logon process; said process has very limited customization of what happens when you hit it. The most you can do is remove basically all the options from the security dialog, meaning you'd substitute Ctrl+Alt+Del, then Enter. However, you can't make it directly open Task Manager, not without writing your own keyboard driver that blocks the OS from even seeing Ctrl+Alt+Del.
