Hi everyone, In one of my computer classes, my friend and I are having a "computer war" where we do somtehing (fixable) to the other person's computer that messes them up. So far his best has been to close a program that I wasn't even using at the time. I've gotten him with a 90 degree rotated destop (for some reason he didn't know how to fix that), and tomorrow I'm going to change the mouse buttons so that left clicking does the right click action and right clicking is the same as left clicking. I might rotate the screen again along with the switched mouse buttons. Later in the week, my other friend and I plan on plugging the first friend's monitor into a different computer, and plugging that computer's monitor into his, so that he has to try to figure out why nothing happens when he moves the mouse or clicks on something. What else could I do? What are your favorite computer pranks?

How about a program that records events on his computer and then reverses them?

For example, if he moved the mouse 300 pixels to the right, wait a little while and then move the cursor back 300 pixels to the left to where it was before. Or, he opens up a document and types something, and the sentence he typed erases itself and then the document closes itself. The end result is that the computer, if left unattended, will (theoretically speaking, since that isn't precisely the case) always end up in the same state that it was when the program started up.

Or, if you want to be lazy and achieve a similar (but slightly less creepy, since it doesn't involve the keyboard and mouse) effect, write a program that constantly sends ctrl-z events to every program with a document open.

Quote: How about a program that records events on his computer and then reverses them?

That's a little out of my league right now, but I like it! I'll have to try to figure this out sometime!

Take a screenshot of the desktop, then move all the icons around, then use the screenshot as the desktop background! Now there will be two of every icon the fake (screenshot) one and the real one.

You can also include the start-bar in the screenshot, but then drag it to the side of the screen so they think the start-button is broken ;0

Back for an April Fools Day joke I played on my brother, I wrote a program that made the screen flash random colors, and after about 30 seconds an official looking yes/no message box would pop up saying:
"Windows has encountered an error and is unable to recover.
Error ER100923: Key system file altered

Recommend complete reformat of the hard drive and reinstallation of the operating system.

Click Yes to reformat or No to attempt to recover:"

Then, no matter what button was clicked, a big April Fools was displayed on the screen. I was almost choked to death after that, but seeing the look on his face when the message box poped up was worth it. It's best if it is the user's own personal computer, but it would still be funny to watch them worry about ruining a school's computer (you could even play it up and talk about how he will have to replace it and the teacher might have to fail him for unnecessary damage to school property).

Also, what about an invisible window (except for an image of the taskbar at the bottom) drawn over the desktop (that way they would be thinking that they clicked a desktop or taskbar icon, but nothing would happen becuase the window was clicked instead) and a message box saying "Illegal use of the left mouse button detected" or something similar would be displayed. You would have to move the taskbar so that they don't actually click something on it. If it's Windows XP, you could also have the message box say "Press the Windows key followed by two presses of the "U" key" (which shuts the computer down)

Just my ideas.

PS - I like Oberon_Command's and Hodgman's ideas too. They would be funny to watch.

The Maze Game!

Take a 3.5 inch floppy disk, line the magnetic disk part with the tips from strike-anywhere matches, and then add a stationary striking surface. When the disk spins, it catches on fire. Put it into the disk drive, turn off his computer, and when he turns his computer on again, the computer tries to read the disk as part of its boot sequence, but then catches on fire. Much fun will be had by all.

Oh wait, computers don't use 3.5 inch disk drives anymore?

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
Take a screenshot of the desktop, then move all the icons around, then use the screenshot as the desktop background! Now there will be two of every icon the fake (screenshot) one and the real one.

You can also include the start-bar in the screenshot, but then drag it to the side of the screen so they think the start-button is broken ;0

I slightly tweak that... take the screenshot then move all icons off the screen and set start bar to hide (or even better adjust the screen height so it's off the bottom of the screen).

Quote: Original post by d000hg

Quote: Original post by Hodgman
Take a screenshot of the desktop, then move all the icons around, then use the screenshot as the desktop background! Now there will be two of every icon the fake (screenshot) one and the real one.

You can also include the start-bar in the screenshot, but then drag it to the side of the screen so they think the start-button is broken ;0

I slightly tweak that... take the screenshot then move all icons off the screen and set start bar to hide (or even better adjust the screen height so it's off the bottom of the screen).

I did this to someone once, except I also photoshopped a "This Program Has Performed an Illegal Operation and Must be Shut Down" error message into the middle.

He rebooted his computer about five times before my laughing gave it away [grin]

Phantom Keystroker V2