Windows Xp Geek Prank

[Diante Scharsch]

Everybodyloves a good prank... unless you are the one on the receiving end of the fun. It's time to hone your pranking skills, not just to make sure you are the best, but so you can avoid being pranked by others.

Yeah, sure, we could go with the old standards, like a blue screen of death screensaver or something like that, but it's time to use our geek skills and come up with something better. We'll cover some of the old favorites too, but maybe with a twist. Note: Many of these pranks require being able to access somebody's computer physically, and many others require them to leave their PC logged in and unattended. You'll have to plan accordingly.

Here's a clever prank for you: Make the victim's computer actually type the word "SPACE" every time they hit the space bar. They'll be lost trying to figure out what on earth is going on, and it couldn't be simpler.

You'll probably want to right-click on the script and compile it to an executable before putting it on their computer. I'm not providing a download for this! Just stick it somewhere on their PC, launch it, and watch the fun!

What's really entertaining is that while I was testing this out, I accidentally pranked myself---my AHK scripts are stored in Dropbox and synced across all my PCs, and I'd forgotten about it on my desktop. Whoops!

This one can't be simpler---just find somebody at work who turns their PC off at night, come in before them, and boot off a Linux Live CD. Then leave an official-looking memo on their desk saying they've been upgraded to Linux, and watch them struggle to figure out what on earth they are doing. You'll probably want to get rid of the Install icon, of course.

This one is really simple to do---just create a shortcut to shutdown.exe on the desktop, and then change the icon to a regular folder, so when they double-click the folder to see what it might contain, they get a nice system shutdown notice instead. You can change the shutdown time to really far in the future so they won't lose any work, but mostly so they get the full benefit of your nerd skills.

If they are using XP, the effect is nice and dramatic, and you can even have some fun with the shutdown time... on Windows 7 you won't be able to show off your geek skills quite as well, but they'll still see something that will confuse them.

If you really want to screw with somebody without installing anything, just enable the Dvorak alternate keyboard layout that even most geeks aren't familiar with. When they type, everything will go haywire.

Head into Control Panel --> Region and Language --> Keyboards --> Change keyboards, then click the Add button and pick the Dvorak layout (or any other random layout you want). Once you've done that, use the drop-down above to set the default.

This usually works out better if the other person has a desktop PC, because you can hide the wireless mouse or keyboard receiver behind their PC, and then every so often type an extra letter, or move the mouse slightly. If you do it right, you can have some fun with this one for a long time. The great thing is that this should work for almost anybody, including people that keep their computer locked all the time.

If they do have a laptop and a wireless mouse, you can simply replace their wireless mouse with an identical-looking one, since it won't work for their PC. They'll assume their mouse batteries are dead, and you can move the mouse pointer around the screen with their mouse. The prank won't last as long, but it will be every bit as fun.

We've covered this before, but you can easily stick custom text into the clock that sits in the taskbar---and most people won't have a clue how to switch it back. Just head into Control Panel --> Region and Language --> Additional Settings --> Time, and change the AM or PM symbols to whatever you want. Or you can read how to do it for Windows 7 or Vista.

You can really throw somebody for a loop if you use a simple AutoHotkey script to flip their trackpad to scroll in the opposite direction. They'll be completely confused! If they happen to have a laptop with a Synaptics touchpad, you can actually tweak this setting right in the Control Panel --> Mouse dialog, but otherwise, check out our article covering the script method, that should work anywhere.

There's any number of possibilities for this one, and the sky is really the limit---the idea is that you put something custom into the AutoCorrect so whatever they type gets replaced with something else.

You can go subtle with it, and just replace a properly typed word with a typo instead, or you can get in their face with something more fun---like making anytime they type their name end up replacing it with " is a jerk". Loads of fun.

For Word 2007 or 2010, head to the Office button --> Options --> Proofing --> AutoCorrect Options. For previous versions... I have no idea. If you want this to be system-wide, you can use AutoHotkey instead.

Even a serious geek is going to be pretty lost on how to troubleshoot a new tab repeatedly opening to a certain page every couple of minutes, if you bury that inside the task scheduler. Just go in and create a new task, run through the wizard and pick the browser executable, plug the site name into the arguments box, and then set the schedule to repeat the task every 5 minutes.

Nice and simple, but oh so fun! Just head into Control Panel --> Mouse --> Pointers and change the Normal pointer to the busy one. They'll think their computer is hanging all the time, but it's really not. For extra fun, you could make the mouse pointers gigantic.

That's it. Once you press that key combo, their desktop will get flipped to the high contrast mode---you can press it again to go back to normal. The great thing is that even if their computer is locked, you can enable high contrast with the icon on the lower left corner. On Mac OS X, you can press Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+8 to invert the screen's colors.

The result looks something like the image above, assuming you followed the second idea and created a folder on the desktop that they'd be sure to notice right away. They'll keep clicking, but nothing will happen.

Here are the top 10 tech-related April Fools' jokes to play on friends and co-workers. The best geek pranks make a gadget or a co-worker's computer appear "broken." Watch with glee as the unsuspecting victim goes mental trying to figure it out.

My eyesight is getting poor, but I do not like using the Windows Magnifier or assistive technologies. The smallest thing on the screen is the text cursor for where text is next to be inserted. As such it is hard to see.

When will such a feature set be available so that I can better see the text cursor insertion point, or if the feature exists, how do I access such settings to permit me to more easily see the text cursor?

Have you ever noticed that little blinking line at the end of whatever you are typing? Of course you have! But did you know that you can make the line darker if you want to? It also makes a fun prank setting to mess with your friends.

The cursor on the screen would blink and be superimposed upon the next character position so that if the software was in insertion mode the character under the block cursor would be pushed further to the right or do a line wrapping operation to be on the next line, or if in overwrite mode, the character under the cursor position would be overwritten.

I had this setting adjusted in Windows 7 prior to upgrade to Windows 10, but 10 or one or more of its updates changed this back to default thickness of 1 pixel. The geek pages are of Windows 7 or 8, but now in Windows 10 these settings are 70% down a much bigger listing of settings. Thanks.

For me, after a restore of an image backup from 2016 done a week or more ago most of the ease of access settings were on one long page and you had to scroll way down the list of options to find this one.

There is so far no way to fix this in Linux. Modifications in Gnome CSS work in most programs in Linux, but LibreOffice does not recognize these mods. So we are stuck with an almost invisible text cursor

3a8082e126