Top 10 Harmless Geek Pranks
Since the dawn of time, geeks have been playing harmless pranks on their beloved (but unsuspecting) associates, and it's up to all of us to carry the torch forward. On the eve of April Fools' Day, when you've got local network access to your coworkers' and family systems, cubicles just crying out to be filled with packing peanuts, and webapps that can do all sorts of things automatically, there's no better time to baffle, confuse, perplex, and just plain mess with your loved ones and associates. Hit the jump for our top 10 favourite harmless geek pranks.
10. Install the Blue Screen of Death Screensaver
Make your co-worker think their PC crashed when they get back from lunch. The BSOD ("Blue Screen of Death") screensaver is a free download from Microsoft (ironically.) For other operating system "support," check out the Linux BSOD 'saver with support for Apple, Windows, and Linux crash screens.
9. Fake a Desktop with Screenshot Wallpaper
Freak out your co-worker or family member by faking out their Windows desktop with an unclickable facade: Take a screenshot of their current desktop, then set it as the desktop wallpaper. Hide the actual taskbar and disable desktop icons (right-click the desktop and choose "Arrange Icons By" and uncheck "Show Desktop Icons.") When your victim returns to the computer, watch the futile clicking begin.
8. Schedule a Phone Call with a Text-to-Speech Message from Wakerupper.com
Wake up calls aren't just for the a.m., you know. Pop your victim's phone number, a time, and a custom message into Wakerupper.com, a free wakeup call service, and they'll get a call with the message read Silicon Sally text-to-speech style back to them. (original post)
7. Fill an Office with Packing Peanuts (Or Make It Look That Way)
Actually filling your co-worker's cubicle with packing peanuts can be a pain in the arse, but if there's a glass wall involved, it's easy to make it look like you did. Check out Hack N Mod's nifty gallery of what looks like a glass room filled with packing material.
April Fools: Cubical Chaos Fakeout [Hack N Mod]
6. Remote Control Your Co-Workers' Computer with VNC
How would it feel to have your mouse taken over by a ghost and do things on your computer you never intended while you watched? You can inflict this feeling of utter confusion on your victim using VNC, a computer remote control protocol. You'll need to install the VNC server on your victim's computer first, and have their IP address, so this one will work best in the office when you're on the same network. Here's how to remote control a computer with VNC. Mac users, here's how to remote control Leopard with TightVNC.
5. Message Co-Workers with NET SEND
Hidden in the depths of the Windows command line is a nifty little utility called Net Send, which pops up very official-looking alert messages on any computer you send them to. If you know your co-workers' IP address, you can net send them goofy messages, like this person on the Geeknewz boards:
A good prank that I have played on some friends involves the net send command. What I did was I used the net send command to send a message that said "Microsoft has detected that you have a small penis. Please consider upgrading for better performance" to other people on my local network. When you use the net send command in the command prompt, you specify the computer you want it sent to by typing the computer name, it also says on the message which computer it came from, so I changed my computer name to Microsoft, so it appeared, to the technically challenged, that the message actually came from Microsoft. In case you were interested, the syntax for the net send is:
net send computername message
Here's more on how to use net send.
4. "Break" Your Victim's LCD Screen with Wallpaper
Want to put a crack into that shiny new widescreen monitor? Download the broken LCD desktop wallpaper, set it as your victim's desktop wallpaper and hide the taskbar and icons.
3. Hijack Firefox with the Total Confusion Pack Extension (Enabled on April 1st Only)
Your victim use Firefox? Install the "Total Confusion Pack" Firefox extension, which enables the following "features" on April 1st only:
- Two Steps Back: Make the back button go back twice—not every time, but only on random instances.
- Rick Rollr: Switch out 2% of the video clips your victim watches with the infamous Rick Astley video.
- The Devil's Inbox: Make the number of unread email in your victim's Gmail inbox exactly 666.
- Highs and Lows/Sarcarsm Enhancer/For real: Add LOL, *sigh*, "for real," "Whatever" and various other commentary to web page text.
- Watch it: Make it look as if the page was loading forever. (Now this is just plain mean.)
2. Customise the Office HP Printer's Console Message
Baffle your coworkers with an "Insert Coin" message on the office printer using the HP Printer Job Language (HPPJL) command set. Here's how to customise the printer's Ready prompt to read whatever you want. (original post)
1. Turn Web Pages Upside Down
If your office or housemates all use the same Wi-Fi network and you've got some network admin skills, run the web traffic to their computers through custom scripts that turn images upside down, blur them, or redirect all web page requests to kittenwar.com. This is the most difficult trick in the list to implement, but it's pretty clever. Here's more on how to set up Upside-Down-Ternet. (original post)
For more good pranks, check out Wired's Top 10 April Fools' Pranks for Nerds, and Ask MetaFilter's thread on the topic.
What's your pick of favourite April Fool's Day prank? Share the love in the comments.
View: AU Comments (16) | US Comments (96 comments)
i remember using the 9th prank in the list. but what i did last time was just delete one shortcut of the victim's commonly used program and placing the wallpaper of the screenshot before removing the shortcut. the other programs overlap the programs shown in the screenshot but only the commonly used program's icon is visible. he eventually called the tech support saying that his programs had become courrupt.
Loved them all.. i pic the broken lcd as my wallpaper! thanks for sharing XD
Messenger service has been off by default since XP SP2, so that one's out unless your IT guy sucks.
These are great. I am going to do that peanut thing.
I stuffed the Directors office with ALL of the office plants in the building. Low Tech, but very effective. Jungle Office
you know, "hit the jump" or "after the jump" means that there is break between the phrase and the article, usually an advertisement or an interruption of the content of some sort. hense the "jump". but you can' say hit the jump when there is no jump.
can't*
if u want 2 do da upside down thing, all u hav 2 do is ctrl-alt-down arrow key. if the pep ur doing it on doesnt no then its just as good. if u want 2 reverse it then do da same thing but w/ da up arrow. it completely turns da hole desktop over.
the best is the desktop switch... too bad that wakerupper is not working, probably in response to this post.
I've tried number 5 quite a few times and made a hell lot of laughs. I did the VNC thing too!
Looks like number 7 would be a good laugh! But cleaning up the mess after you've had your fun would be a little pain in the you know what!
I once made a powerpoint with error messages wich were clickable, it said " we own your house!" and my aunty beleived it... gullible FOOLS!
Awesome tricks for geeks... people are bound to fall from them, not sure if I would like to apply one of those for my co-workers but would surely recommend. Thanks for sharing...
Internet tools and gadgets are really becoming interesting day by day.
Those are freaking awesome. I'm going to have to do the Blue Screen of Death on my buddies laptop.
The blue screen of death is absolutely hysterical. I plan on doing this to a few friends. Another good office prank are the plastic roaches and mice. They can really scare some of your more squeamish colleagues out of their wits.
hahaha I love 'em! Too bad its too late now, but there's always next year!
Wow! Is thera anybody who wants to read the website upside down? :)
I think I'm gonna miss Google for this. Anyway, good stuffs.
I've Used NetSend many a time. My school disabled it, but the message pops up and then disappears, so if you hold the enter button as you send it, the message can be read and has the advantage of being over every other window.
Many jokes with this in the library, which conveniently has each Computer's name written on a big sign.
web_guru
...in high school, I got suspended for two days for net send.
RockLobsterNet
ARRRRGH! Normally I'd read all the comments and decide if I have anything of worth to contribute, however on this occaision I only got to the 1st one.
@SEARCH ENGINES - "Before the Internet - this day was probably only known in the USA. Now with Social sites publicizing it, it is celebrated worldwide" - No mate you just did it FATTER than the rest of the world. OMG get a passport and see a bit of the world! It was celebrated in Rome around 1500 and was adopted up and down that quaint little ol place Europe a good few hundered years ago, The USA is how old again? Sad Sad Sad.
Bob1967
This is very old, and it only works on IE. It works better on Windows 95 or 98 because the full screen used to work perfect on those old IE'S, now IE doesn't disappear the title bar, still a nice Unloading Windows Prank.
Check it out
[www.yaromat.de]
i2008
I love the BSOD trick, and used it on my Dad's comp. I don't have his password but I do have an Admin account, so I set the default logon screensaver (you know, when no one's logged in yet) to the bluescreen with a 2 second delay.
That way once they boot, they are given 2 seconds, after that it bluescreens!
Instructions here:
[support.microsoft.com]
Jon
Today, one of my friends used OpenDNS to block access to sports and video sites on her husband's computer. I'm eagerly awaiting the results.
timepiece
Nircmd and Wizmo (Google them) are two neat utilities for doing all kinds of "little things" like opening/closing the CD drive, changing the system volume, etc. Set them up with a batch file on your victim's machine, and maybe use a task scheduler or cron to run them automagically.
RandoMaster is another fun one. It's had people thinking the room was haunted! Randomly play a loud sneeze, or a very subtle electrical arcing noise, or anything in between.
taodude
I'm a big fan of a small piece of tape over the mouthpiece of their phone. You'd be surprised at how much loud yelling that will cause.
lodebrecht
I only have one complaint... many of these take a little time at the victim's station. Can you do me a favor and give this up a couple of days earlier next year? I really like the BSOD screensaver, the fake desktop, and the broken screen... I have these victims all lined up, but it's too late now.
dtaschler
@bradcg: I did this to a friend with a loaded desktop. Took him over a half hour to close everything. Simple, fast, wonderful. We still joke about it.
I'm also a fan of fork bombs. Super effective and darn easy. As above, be responsible and be around to fix the problem. They WILL crash a system (e.g. you WON'T be able to save your current work after execution).
Remember: Don't do anything to anyone else you wouldn't want done to you, and sometimes even less than that.
ACF
I've always wanted to try the upside down internet but I don't have a router that will support it. I do have a Windows Server 2003 box that I use as a VPN server. Any idea if I could use that as a gateway for the same effect?
Tyson0016
@lm:
Whose fault is it if the IT support are inept?
Most work places required a little levity and if this gets you fired you are probably better off.
xenobyte72
Me I plan on listing all of my coworker's cars on Craigslist for little money to get a flood of confusing phone calls.
nerfball1976
I used to NET SEND my co-workers all the time. That was hilarious. Stuff like "PATCH MS001-CS-FCKGW INSTALLED SUCCESSFULLY. Please save all work. Computer will restart in 10 seconds."
Or "PATCH MS005-WS32.EXE INSTALL BEGINNING. Hard disk format will commence in 15 seconds."
That one always freaked people out. lol
Now messenger service is disabled on all these machines. *sigh*
JaimeZX
Set the location for the browser cache to desktop.
After a couple of hours of surfing the victim will close the browser only to find about a hundred temp file icons on his desktop. I did this to my bosses son because he'd use my work computer at night and change all of my settings. It was a Windows 98 box with both IE and Firefox. I changed the cache location for IE and the next day IE was gone.
Tinian
Here's a simple but effective prank most people end up pulling on themselves at some point along the lines. All you have to do is wait till they're not looking and stick a disk in their floppy drive. Next time they restart, they should get a Non-System Disk error and the system will refuse to come up.
This is most effective if their computer is somewhere out of the way, like under the desk or something. And of course, it only works for those of us who still /have/ floppy drives. The great thing is that with how infrequently people tend to shut down, this is prank is like a sleeper cell just waiting to go off a few days, weeks, or months down the road, and most likely after they've already encountered an error or just installed something new (since that's the most common reason people shutdown). Just try to remember to keep an eye out for it, you wouldn't want them to reformat their harddrive because of a silly prank (or maybe you would, who knows).
bmearns
Here's one from Numbers That Work: April Fools on Fox and Friends Steve Doocy by Brian Kilmeade
Brian, says he has Steve Doocy's number? HaHa, He Does! The number is: 64783742779 and it 'spells' Mister Happy on a phone keypad. The site [www.64783742779.info] loads the Hamster Dance website... Steve Doocy is the author of The Mister Happy Handbook about marriage.
[www.numbersthatwork.com]
NTWWEB
Of course if everyone in the office is using Vista, number 5 won't work. Unless you want to go around and install a small app that lets you rung Net Send. But by then, I think your co-workers might catch on to what you're doing.
Iczer2
WINDOWS
- Change the mouse double-speed click rate to super fast, no-one can possibly be fast enough
- In word, co to Tools>Auto Correction and set up a correction for a reasonably standard string. One of my favs is to change "George W" to "W----R". The user will have that term corrected everytime and it will take most a while to figure out the prank.
- Change the keyboard to German so that the Y and Z keys are swapped
CMD LINE OSes
- My all time favourite, at uni a friend of ours changed set up one guys' system to print a file every time the user typed in any varient of dir. The file contained two lines:
.
..
The victim honestly thought he'd lost all his files and in a mad panic was asking oper to get them from backup - of course, when oper looked at his system the files were there. Took about half a day to figure it out.
kersti
On a Mac, one of my favorite pranks is to change the keyboard language. Dvorak is especially confusing, Arabic works well too.
dalton
@SEARCH ENGINES: Look's like Google and Virgin have "joined forces" to put a human colony on Mars, Virgle. Here's their main site and the Youtube channel.
Zak Canard
...or even to impart some vocabulary. ; )
Johnjoe0110
@SEARCH ENGINES - LMFAO - Before the internet, the rest of the world were just sitting in caves, grunting at each other, waiting for the US to embark some culture onto us. Laugh... I nearly sh@t myself!
Johnjoe0110
@SEARCH ENGINES: The roots of April Fools' Day reach back to times long before the USA even existed.
wiz
Seriously, is it any fun any more when everyone is expecting it? Who here didn't make the rounds of various websites this morning looking for their April Fools. How is it a fool anymore when nobody is fooled?
Nat-London
"Before the Internet - this day was probably only known in the USA. Now with Social sites publicizing it, it is celebrated worldwide"
Ops, no way. I remember that I caught up my friends where I'm a kid here in Brazil in all 1st April.
I'm 37 years old now. So the internet has nothing to do with the 1st April pranks.
jmprado
Google's can be found in Gmail this year.
marsneedsrabbits
Take the "NET SEND" concept a couple of steps further with either SSH or Apple Remote Desktop + the magic of Mac OS X terminal command "say" ...
turn up the volume first: osascript -e "set Volume 10" (might need sudo first)
say "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the Apple plant in Cupertino, California on the 12th of January 2002. My instructor was Mr. Jobs, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you."
drbertz
Does the net send command still work? I thought that Microsoft had removed it in XP?
I've never seen the fake HP printer console message before and will certainly be checking it out.
Thanks!
rogun64
HA -- just used the cracked LCD on my roommate -- I put up the image on our TV using the xbox ( img here: [www.jrin.net] ) and then from my room, I IM'd him a bogus link to a "dude, office depot has a 1tb external hdd for $80!!!", and when the link didn't work, he got out of his room and saw the damage! it was great, thanks lh
jrinco11
We use the Bonfire project ( www.bonfirelive.com ) manager at work. When it logs you out, it gives you a little "You have been logged out" message and puts you on the login screen. I changed the home page in a workmate's computer, which was already Bonfire's login page, to display "Mike, you're fired!" where the "logout" message goes. Now, just to wait for him to find it.
Jarett
There's always the quick and easy change your office mate's mouse from right handed to left handed. Have a great Apr 1st!
Dave_Surfs
Is anyone else having trouble downloading the BSOD screensaver? It says it downloads and then when I click open it can't find it.
Destrox
Wow...I'm surprised no one has mentioned Wikipedia. They already have the April Fool's Day main page up because of GMT. However, the best Wiki prank has to be Jimbo establishing his Wikimedia Empire. [en.wikipedia.org]
Jimbo loves me this I know, for the Wiki tells me so!
Destrox
I am personally a big fan of the "Give MS Word Tourettes" trick... Just get access to their PC long enough to add a little script and at random intervals MS Word will spout out a random phase of your choosing. For how to do it [www.iambetterthanu.com]
There are a couple other goods ones like the zoom trick there too.
lordeirias
Easiest way to flip the screen is Ctrl+Alt+Arrow Key.
This is trick to do in XP. Take an MP3 of a song that someone hates, convert it to a WAV file, then place it in the (hidden) folder C:/WINDOWS/Media. Then go to Control Panel > Sounds, Speech and Audio Devices > Change the sound scheme. In the "Program events" list scroll down and select "Start Windows," next select the song WAV from the "Sounds" list below, then click Apply > OK. Now, every time they start up their computer that stupid song will play. The average person will never figure out how to make it stop. You can also change the various beeps and alert tones to farting noises, etc..
FrakAttack
@ripfire4: Atrl+Alt+arrow keys, if I remember correctly. That's the default key anyway.
It's a pity most people in my workplace won't appreciate jokes like these.
kureshii
Pop off and switch the "M" and "N" keys.
InsidiousTuna
If you put translucent tape over the sensor on an optical mouse, the mouse won't read the motion but the light will still shine through so the person using the mouse will think that the mouse is on and therefore still plugged in.
ceilingfanboy
Numbers 10, 9, 6, and 5 are nowhere near harmless. I know a bunch of idiots who would immediately FFR without even troubleshooting. In a corporate environment, an overzealous and poorly trained admin would do that. You could easily lose your job pulling any of these in a corporate environment.
lm
Wakerupper is down. I'm guessing they were overloaded for April Fools!
Due to a spike in the number of visitors to the site, access to Wakerupper has been temporarily restricted to registered users only.
RubberduckGrrl
April Fools Day is childish and lame and is completely inappropriate in the work place.
jtimberman
played with net send today, coworkers were suitably amazed.
the irony is, I figured out we can use it for legit tasks as well, like for pop-up messages when installation scripts are executed.
Spaceboy
Some of you Atlanta folks may remember Barnes, Leslie and Jimmy on morning radio. One year, Jimmy and Barnes slipped "Haywood Jablomi" into a news story they fed Leslie. She didn't catch it before she read it and the two of them giggled like third graders {OK, I did too}.
Strange thing about that: altho Leslie took a back seat to the other two on the air, she was actually the program director of the station, meaning she was their boss. No surprise: years later she's still there and the other two aren't.
Hands
@2-7offsuit: As I mentioned, these have been around forever so I'm sure with the advances in anti-virus/spyware software may find some of them as viruses/spyware but they are not.
jarhead
Someone at work once changed the printer to alternate between MAIN SCREEN TURN ON! and FOR INFINITE JUSTICE!
Then someone called IT and told them the printer had a virus, and they locked down the whole shebang so we couldn't do it anymore. Woe.
mschlock
Nice post. Unfortunately, I won't have time to implement the #1 trick today.. Will have to remember it for next year.
I wish the cracked LCD graphic came with alpha layer blending so that you can put your own screenshot behind the "messed up" LCD.
Posco Grubb
One I used to do was replace the user's OS with Windows RG:
[www.deanliou.com]
Click the button on that page that loads WinRG (it's Flash) in a new popup window in Internet Explorer. With the new window open in IE7, hit F11 to get it full screen all the way (hit it again to go back). To make it even more convincing, you can disable the IE7 status bar. The trick doesn't look as convincing in FireFox.
envador
@navvywavvy: I tried that once, it ended in tragedy and I had to clean it up.
I might try the wallpaper gimmack on my school library computers.
Andy
hahaha!
A favorite of mine is to create AutoCorrect entries for them in MS Word--that will replace one phrase for another. If you REALLY want to miss with them, pick a few common phrases and make them the negative so that everytime they type "will" they get "won't", do changes to don't, might changes to definitely won't, etc. Just be sure to change it back later :-)
Cheers.
Jared Goralnick
Oh yeah, and lift the toilet seat and stretch saran wrap across the bowl. Then close the seat again and wait for someone to try using it. ewwwwwwwwww.
navvywavvy
We never did the packing peanuts, but one co-worker of mine did tinfoil another's office: [picasaweb.google.com]
RomeIsRising
A classic favourite of mine is to go into someone's autocomplete settings in Word and change the person's name to automatically change to something horrible like, "Davey 'eat-a-dick' Jones".
Another great one is to go into their email program and change the "From" name from the person's name to something absurdly rude like "UP YOURS, LOSER!"
navvywavvy
Installing VNC, rewriting printer setttings, putting files on their computer.
Strange definition of harmless.
robdew
Also, altering the "shutdown" sound in Windows to something involving goat bleats and some female moaning can be quite the fun one for the end of the day.
nutbastard
Hey, you got slashdotted. Congrats =P
taybay
I was thinking it would be cool to find the command line equivalents of a bunch of crap, throw them all into a .bat file, then stick them on a thumb drive. When you're victim is away from their computer, place it on their computer somewhere, then change a well-used link on their desktop to point to that bat file. One click on the .bat file, and a bunch of crap changes. But I can't find commands for changing wallpaper, screen configs, mouse pointers, volume, all that crap. Anyone know where to get some of those?
paqman
If you are on a Domain at work or know someone's user/pass for Windows you can get Fastpush (google it). This will remotely and silently install VNC on ANY computer that you know the user/pass to. Currently at my workplace we are all on a domain and know one another's user/passes so it makes this easy.
phimuskapsi
My personal favorite (and suitable for anytime of the year), is abusing the Microsoft AutoCorrect feature.
Anytime my brother-in-law types his name "Gary" it automatically changes to a different word we all learned in health class.
Always a hoot!
Pete Venkman
@jarhead:
I just tried that downhoax program before using it on someone else. Symantec found the InfoStealer.exe virus after I ran it. Awesome. I guess the joke is on me afterall.
2-7offsuit
Is it just me, or is the idea of some of these (especially the vnc trick) a great way to get fired at the drop of a hat?
dirtygreek
@thegsusfreek:
Same thing happened when I tried it.
Brimstone
One year, I stuck tape to my boss's mouse so it wouldn't move, did #9 and #10, and changed his default printer so it would print to the other end of the building.
That was fun! The key to my success was waiting until around 3pm. He was expecting something early in the day, so when lunchtime rolled around and nothing happened to him, he thought he was in the clear... I had also pranked other people early in the day. Waited until he left for a meeting... then score!
picantel
i work in an office full of computer nerds....i cant wait to test some of these out
Ashley927
@possumboy:
Great trick, I love it.
startswithone1
I tried Wakerupper.com twice and the text-to-speech didn't work. The second time, all I put in was "This is a test" (without quotes). Am I doing something wrong?
thegsusfreek
FYI :
In France, new year use to be April 1st till Charles IX (1550-1574) who change the calendar.
The story says people kept on celebrating April 1st....in a different way.
ledruide
Just a note of caution: once had someone prank me by the simple expedient of pulling out my keyboard cable. It looked as if my mac had frozen, totally. So I rebooted.
Eventually figured it out, but I'd lost a lot of unsaved work due to an unneeded reboot.
Jus' saying.. the pranks that aren't likely to cause same seem ... safest.
gyffes
Pulling one of these tricks on a colleague who is facing an important deadline would be a good way to lose a friend .... It is obvious that some people have too much time on their hands.
( Friends come and go ... enemies accumulate )
why not use some of this cleverness doing something helpful ? This is not the best use of LifeHacker space I have seen lately. YMMV
t
tony3tlh
@selfdestruct: That was mean. That really hurt and disarrayed epileptics.
ph15h
Don't forget this classic: switch the monitor cable from one cpu to another. Especially effective in pods, where there are limitless possibilities.
sailor80
@Chooch: Same problem, It only says this is from Wakerupper.com (or something to that sort).
bbobjoe
How about the epilepsy prank just recently?
[www.engadget.com]
selfdestruct
And on a less than harmless note are those pranks that those 2 guys keep pulling on each other over at College Humor. A bit more serious...okay...a LOT more serious, but funny as hell!!
ninjamurf
@johnniewalker:
dude. DUDE!! what an awesome idea!!! now if only i worked in an office.
echoboom
I tried the Wakerupper call and it didn't actually say my message. Has anyone gotten it to work?
Chooch
Oh, how I wish I'd known about that "change the HP printer message" prank before I retired from my last job. I can think of several appropriate messages that would have fit that office just fine. And the IT guys were a bunch of doofuses who wouldn't have known how to fix it.
infmom
For those pranking non-expert Mac users, the Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+8 switch to inverted colors (mentioned here and here) is a quick, easy, and deeply unsettling trick. :)
Mysphyt
@johnniewalker: that is so awesome!...LMAO
superbryant88
@SEARCH ENGINES: what the heck? so the rest of the world was under a rock before the Internet????
superbryant88
In Latin America and Spain, the equivalent to April Fool's would be 'El dia de los inocentes', celebrated on December 28th. I believe it has some religious origin.
I also think that assuming that April Fool's is a U.S.A. thing is far from the truth.
kapital
And don't forget RJL Software which has been around for years (when you could actually e-mail .EXE files). Some of my favs...
Mouse Droppings - your mouse pointer craps on the screen
Downhoax - modify a shortcut to point this executable and it appears if you are downloading porn (I like using this with a Word icon)
The Finger - mouse pointer flips you the bird every so often
Tons of others...
jarhead
All these pranks are GEMS. *Starts taking notes*. Thanks lifehacker!
BeFrugalNotCheap
It was fun hijacking my friend's computer on my local network with Remote Desktop. He didn't realize that I installed the software on his system, and I still didn't tell him how that happened. He might sell his macbook. Cruelty can indeed be fun.
Kaiser-Machead
About 10 years ago, we put an unused microphone from a pc on to the office copier and just taped the cord in the back. We put a sign on the copier that said 'This copier has been upgraded with Voice Recognition Technology, please speak clearly into the microphone the number of copies you need.
When the first few people tried it, we told them they had to speak louder or clearer, or that they were forgetting to add 'Please' at the end of their commands. 'Please is like the enter key' we told them.
johnniewalker
The cracked screen prank is priceless!
Joseph
*Note* this prank usually DOES make the computer crash.
You have to do this one WHILE your buddy is there. And you might have to be able to take a punch. When your friend is on their computer. Tell them you want to show them something. Go to the desktop. And then press "Ctrl+A" and then press "Enter". Every program/link on the desktop will open. It is a very simple prank. But it is quite annoying... And funny at that :D
bradcg
lols :P one thing to do to people who dont know how to end processes or i suppose if youre on a computer that wont let you run commands (and they arent clever enough to get around that)
then whack open an internet explorer or firefox window (whatever browser as long as it doesnt give you the option to disable javascript when you get alerts)
and type this into their url bar:
javascript: for(i=1; i!=0; i++){ alert("youve pressed enter "+i+" times!\nkeep goin!");}
an hit enter!
its fun watching them continuously pressing enter trying to get rid of the annoying alert knowing that it will never end >.<
possumboy
My roomie's comp doesn't do ctr+alt+down arrow :-(
goodywitch
@ceviche: I'm wondering the same... it was not even originated in EUA to start with...
Victor V.
@SEARCH ENGINES: Since when has April Fool's only had anything to do with the USA?
ceviche
I just downloaded the BSOD screensaver to see what it really looks like. It scared me for a second because it looked as though my computer really crashed. I knew it really didn't, but just seeing that screen brought fear to me.
bbobjoe
On some PCs using Intel Graphics, there's a keyboard shortcut you can use to rotate the screen.
Also, there are some HP printers than can automatically adjust for paper size depending on the way you set the paper tray. By slightly adjusting the sliders out of place, you can watch frustration build up like Ye Olde Faithful.
ripfire4
I've done the VNC one before....using TightVNC, you can disable the icon in the tasktray so they really don't see anything
[www.tightvnc.com]
Y2KGTP
The screenshot wallpaper one is my favorite. I pulled it on a coworker and giggled my head off when she called our IT department asking for help. The look of panice was priceless. And it doesn't mess anything up when you do it, so no harm done.
davelawrence8
LOL: Can't wait to see what Google has up its sleeves for April Fools....
Before the Internet - this day was probably only known in the USA. Now with Social sites publicizing it, it is celebrated worldwide
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