[ros-kernel] CSRSS Consoles

[ea at iol.it]

Hi all,

Today a really strange event happened on my workstation: a regular cmd.exe, running under Windows 2000 Professional EN SP4, suddenly died, but the associated console was not removed by csrss.exe/win32k.sys. Context: I was working with the MS telnet client run from the dead cmd. Telnet was connected to localhost, because the remote machine was off an SSH tunnel. The remote sshd died; the local SSH client died and the telnet reported a remote closed connection message. The cmd prompt appeared, but I could type nothing.

The console is fully functional: moving the window, opening the system menu, selecting text, scrolling etc, but no keyboard input is possible. Opening the task manager and selecting the icon in the 1st tab for switching to the associated process leads to nothing.

Here is a screenshot to show what happened (previous messages in the hung console removed for privacy reasons):

http://users.libero.it/ea/csrss-console-with-no-process.jpg

Does this confirm that, in graphics mode, consoles are windows owned and managed by csrss.exe/win32k.sys and that can even live alone?

N.B. this is not a joke.

ea