Bill Gates has revealed the one thing he would go back and change in the Windows operating system if he could.

The world's richest man said he would have made the iconic Ctrl-Alt-Del command a single key - a move that would have saved millions of computer users from the so-called "three finger salute".

The keyboard combination has become legendary as the way to reboot a PC or close down a misbehaving program. But Gates reckons the whole thing could have been made easier.

Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates poses next to a computer with Windows XP (
Image:
Reuters)

"If I could make one small edit I would make that a single key operation," he told an audience at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum.

However, the billionaire philanthropist put the decision down to the IBM hardware he was using at the time.

"The IBM hardware PC keyboard only had one way it could get a guaranteed interrupt generated. So clearly the people involved, they should have put another key on in order to make that work," he said.

IBM's original PC BIOS (basic input-output system) stipulated that the three keys would forcibly trigger a reboot - so Microsoft's OS was forced to follow suit. However, the input has since become synonymous with Microsoft's software.

Bill Gates (
Image:
Getty)

Gates left his role as CEO of Microsoft in 2000, but continued to advise the company as he focused more on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

He has pledged to leave most of his fortune to philanthropy and is currently working to eradicate polio and combat famine in the poorest parts of the world.