Here is one I pulled on a co-worker on his last day at work. Every one leaves their machine unlocked and unattended for at least a short period of time, so the prank has to be quick! This is what I did to his outlook and Explorer.
Set them to a foreign language. In IE, you can change the language the browser uses when browsing certain pages...like MSNBC or Hotmail! The other thing is with Outlook. You can either change the language it uses, or in my case, I changed the preview window to show the text in the same color as the background. This way it looks like he has mail, but he can't see it! The settings for this aren't obvious, so it may take a while for the target to get it changed back...in the meantime, you will get a great laugh!
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Get a screen capture of someone's desktop (press Print Screen). Make a BMP out of it (you can do this using the Paint accessory), then select that as the background image. Now hide their Icons.
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To give some one a nasty shock, install the BSOD screen saver onto their PC
This one is a bit old, but for years, I carried around a floppy with the shutdown screens from a Chinese version of Windows 98. I used to love watching the expression on people's faces when they saw the screen that was supposed to say "It is Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer" and instead saw a half dozen Chinese characters.
The guy in the cube next to me wasn't very familiar with NT, which has a built-in scheduling service, called the AT command. It was great fun to schedule applications to start up on his computer at odd times. For instance, I could have solitaire pop up on his screen by typing the following (from my computer):
at \\joescomputer 8:30 /interactive sol.exe
The scheduler service has to be started on his computer for that to work. For a while, I used the /every: switch to set it to run every day at the same time, but he started to think his PC was possesed then...
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A nice harmless one for Win 9x machines is to make a copy of the hidden root directory file MSDOS.SYS and call it WINBOOT.INI (also in C:\).
Then change the line:-
BootGUI=1
to read
BootGUI=0
The next time they boot up the machine it will stop at the DOS prompt with no warning or error message. Unless the person knows about WINBOOT.INI they can spend ages trying to diagnose the problem.
To recover from this just DELete WINBOOT.INI or as a temporary fix enter WIN and do it from explorer.
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Create a folder on the desktop entitled "In Case of Fire."
Inside leave the message: "Not now stupid, IN CASE OF FIRE !!!"
You just know it will be opened!
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Here is one I pulled on a co-worker on his last day at work. Every one leaves their machine unlocked and unattended for at least a short period of time, so the prank has to be quick! This is what I did to his outlook and Explorer.
Set them to a foreign language. In IE, you can change the language the browser uses when browsing certain pages...like MSNBC or Hotmail! The other thing is with Outlook. You can either change the language it uses, or in my case, I changed the preview window to show the text in the same color as the background. This way it looks like he has mail, but he can't see it! The settings for this aren't obvious, so it may take a while for the target to get it changed back...in the meantime, you will get a great laugh!
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Back in the old DOS days, I used to change the dos prompt, from the normal C:\> (prompt $P$G) to instead say this:
Bad or missing command interpreter
System halted
This was easily achieved by adding the following two lines to the end of the C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file:
CLS
PROMPT Bad or missing command interpreter$_System halted$_
I would also comment out the C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM line if it was present, to stop Windows from loading when the PC was turned on, by changing it to say REM C:\WINDOWS\WIN.COM
It didn't do any harm, and the DOS prompt still worked perfectly. But it fooled everyone into thinking their machine didn't work anymore. It was especially funny when I did it to the computers at my school, and saw the computer teachers reboot the computers time and time again, unable to work out what was "wrong".
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Switch the mouse from right-handed to left-handed in Control Panel.
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Stick a shortcut to a screen saver in the Startup Folder. It harms nothing and drives people nuts!
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For a friend who travels with a laptop, secretly install a batchfile and put a shortcut to it in the startup folder. My favorite clears the screen and prints:
Arming...
Armed...
Time to Detonation
49,48,47...
You get the idea!
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Here's a low tech one with surprising results. A few years ago on April 1st, we waited until our departmental secretary left for lunch. While she was gone we cut a plain piece of cardstock to the exact size of her glare screen. We stuck it on the inside of the glare screen and put the screen back on the computer. Believe it or not, it actually took someone from IT to figure out what was wrong with her monitor. And he was on his way down with a replacement monitor for the "non-working" one.
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Back in the old days where DOS was the backbone operating system, I used to edit the autoexec.bat file and right before the command "win" I would put "autoexec.bat". this caused the computer to keep running the autoexec.bat file continuously, until you did a break.
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When we were still running Win 95, I modified a coworkers AUTOEXEC.BAT by adding these lines:
@ECHO OFF
CLS
ECHO Format C:
ECHO Warning: All data on drive C: will be destroyed.
ECHO Continue? (Y/N): Y
ECHO Formatting in progress...
CHKDSK C:
When that CHKDSK started up, he immediately hit ctrl-alt-del. This continued for about 15 minutes until my ROTFLMAO tipped him off.
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After switching to NT and before the company implemented its internet filtering, I added a totally inappropriate URL to a coworkers Start folder. He figured that out pretty quickly, so I then added the same entry to the registry under HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\CurrentVersion\Run. This also worked for other things such as a WAV of a particularly loud body function.
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In the Word application, change an automatic text to insert April Fool's or any phrase or word that may baffle the operator. In the Word program, go to the Insert menu, then to AutoText, click on Auto Correct tab. You can either change an existing auto correct feature or enter your own. No harm done and easily changed back or deleted. I personally chose to replace my co-worker's name (when typed in a fax or letter) to "The Big Butt-Head!". Be careful if they don't proof their work and then send it out!
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Remove the mouse ball from the mouse. I usually put it in the person's coffee cup. So they usually find it first thing when they get coffee (and don't know what it is....one lady actually threw it away!).
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Step 1 - find a potentially embarrassing .WAV file and download it to victim's PC (my favorite is the one from "When Harry Met Sally", but YMMV)
Step 2 - go to the 'Sounds' control panel and save their current sound scheme (so it's not too difficult to put back)
Step 3 - change ALL of their sounds to the .WAV file previously mentioned
Step 4 - Turn down/off speakers and put the desktop back the way the had it
Step 5 - Turn speakers up loud enough that neighbors can hear and walk away
Bonus points for also backing up all their current .WAV's and replacing them with the embarrassing one, so when they 'put it back', they're not safe yet. (hint: from DOS: FOR %A IN (*.WAV) DO COPY victim.WAV %a)
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This only works for certain mice (Logitech for sure, I don't know about others):
With some mice, there is a Control Panel that lets you set the 'orientation' (some people hold their mice kind of crooked, so it makes it easier for them). Go to this control panel, and move the mouse straight to the side. (A hint to help you put it back - hold the mouse sideways to re-select this control panel or you'll drive yourself nuts 'wandering' the mouse around the screen.)
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Write a batch file with the following:
rundll.exe user.exe, exitwindows
Place it in the victim's startup folder. Now every time the computer is booted, it will immediately shut down whenever Windows is finished loading. Alternately, the last command in the batch file can be changed to exitwindowsexec to make the computer enter an endless series of reboots. To remove this behavior, delete the batch file from a Dos prompt or boot up in safe mode and delete it from there.
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Change the keyboard settings to Dvorak: Control panel->Keyboard->Language->US - Dvorak. This results in all the wrong letters popping up when people try to type.
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In DOS, create a folder on the desktop with a particularly tempting name that requires a space (like "Pam Anderson Naked"). But in DOS, don't use a real space, use Alt+255. When you try to access the folder, Windows emphatically denies it's existence. You can't even delete it in Windows, but it is completely harmless.
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The way that MS resolves host names is that, your PC looks to an internal host file before going out to an external DNS server. If you add a couple of simple entries to a victim's host file (c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc) it can really play havoc with them.
For example, say your victim frequently visits www.about.com. Take the IP address of another website (199.93.70.4) and add this entry to your victim's host file.
199.93.70.4 www.about.com
This means that every time your friend types www.about.com into his browser he will be directed to 199.93.74.4, which is www.truck-nuts.com. The possibilities are endless.
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Many computer users have a slideshow screensaver installed. Just point the screensaver at their Temporary Internet Files folder... When away from their desk, everyone else can see the "non-productive" images from their recent web surfing! (you may have to unhide the folder for this to work)
