Bill Gates Says ‘Control-Alt-Delete’ Was a Big Mistake

When you are using your Windows based computer and things freeze up or get slow, we all know what to do -- hit "control-alt-delete" -- and all can be repaired.

Apparently, that combination of keystrokes should have never seen the light of day.

In an interview this week, Bill Gates said, "It was a mistake. We could've had a single button [to restart the computer], but the guy who did the IBM keyboard design didn't want to give us our single button."

So a combination of control, alt and delete was picked because you wouldn't press all three of those together accidentally. It would have to be intentional.

The plan was to get rid of the control-alt-delete function after they were done building and testing the software but it ending up staying. It's been part of every single version of Windows for the 27 years since its debut.

[ABC News]