PC Practical Jokes

The real secret of successful pranking is simplicity. Your prank should be quick to implement and even quicker to reverse, especially if you’re working for a company that doesn’t look kindly on time wasting.

Pranks that take an age to set up usually aren’t worth it. So, while it’s possible to grow grass in someone’s keyboard or go crazy with the toolbar buttons in Office 97, that’s an awful lot of effort for relatively little reward. We prefer more subtle tweaks: system tools turned to the dark side, software that appears to have a mind of its own and, of course, demonic PC possession.

When PCs get possessed

Swap the keyboard

This is easiest to do in an office where there are lots of PCs gathered near one another. Just unplug your victim’s keyboard or mouse and plug in another one that you control. When they type or move the mouse, so do you – but of course it’s your input that controls what happens on-screen.

Add a wireless adaptor

Wireless mice are handy things, but they’re full of prank potential. Wait until nobody’s looking and install a wireless mouse adaptor on your target’s computer, but leave their existing mouse connected. Windows will accept input from both devices, so wait until your victim’s doing something fiddly and then send their mouse pointer on an adventure. If you only do it occasionally, this prank can go undetected for days.

Take (remote) control

Remote access software enables you to control one PC from another, Apps such as TightVNC can be installed without leaving any obvious sign that they’re running (unless your victim’s using Windows Vista: its beefed-up security makes such mischief considerably harder).

With VNC installed on your machine and your target’s, you can take control of their PC from anywhere with an internet connection. Make sure your firm’s IT policies don’t prohibit installing unauthorised software or fiddling with firewalls, though: any remote control software is a potential security risk and some companies won’t see the funny side. You should also remove the software as soon as you’ve pulled your prank.

Who they gonna call?

Or there’s Office Poltergeist, which is like VNC, but designed specifically for messing with your coworkers. Once you’ve installed the server on your victim’s PC and the controller on yours, you can open and close their CD drive, play silly sounds or pop up alert boxes on their screens. Don’t visit the Google group that’s linked to from the Office Poltergeist website, though: it’s been defunct for ages and has been overrun by spammers of the ‘not safe for work’ variety.

Fingers of fun

Edit AutoCorrect

In Word (and many other text-based programs), automatic text correction is a godsend – and it isn’t long before people start to rely on it. That means that a few well- chosen edits of the AutoCorrect and AutoText options in Word can cause chaos, either by turning correctly spelt words into typos or by triggering unwanted and/or inappropriate text whenever the user tries to type something. Be gentle, though: not everybody proofreads documents before circulating them and you don’t want to get anyone fired.

Tape up the mouse

In days of old, we’d take the ball out of people’s mice, but today’s mice tend to be optical rather than mechanical. Not to worry – a bit of tape will screw up a modern rodent’s sensor just as efficiently.

Make the mouse sleepy

The Mouse Properties dialog is surprisingly handy for pranksters. Changing the mouse speed to its slowest setting turns even the simplest movement into an ordeal, while swapping the left and right buttons or reprogramming extra buttons can make the most Ghandi-esque gentle soul want to scream like a wounded gorilla.

Cut new keys

Popping the caps off a few keys and swapping them around is an easy way to mess with people. Good choices include swapping 7,8 and 9 with 1, 2 and 3 on the number pad or swapping B, N and M for F, G and H on the main keyboard.

This prank won’t work on touch typists, of course – but don’t worry, you can catch them out with a quick fiddle of Windows’ region and language settings. A few moments of tweaking enables you to entirely remap the keyboard – to a left-handed Dvorak keyboard layout, for example. The beauty of this prank is that plugging in another keyboard won’t solve the problem, so it takes a computer savvy user to fix.

Sound and vision

Muddy up ClearType

ClearType font smoothing is designed to make on-screen text as readable as possible, and Microsoft kindly provides a tuning tool so that you can make it perfect. In the wrong hands (ours), however, it can also make text exceptionally hard to read. On a Windows XP or Vista machine, download the tuner, run it and select the fuzziest option every time. If your victim doesn’t complain and make you fix it, though, it’s still a good idea to change things back at the first opportunity – if you don’t, they’ll end up with a splitting headache.

Turn the screen upside down

Depending on the video card installed in the system you’re fiddling with, you may be able to rotate the screen by 90, 180 or 270° by either pressing [CTRL]+[ALT] and the arrow keys or by right-clicking on the video card’s icon in the System Tray. For example, on our machine – which is running a Radeon card – we need to right-click on the ATI icon, select the display and then click on Rotate Display. If the key combination doesn’t work and you rotate the display from the tray icon, you get bonus points, because changing it back is fiddly and annoying. If your victim turns their monitor upside down to solve the problem, give yourself extra points as well.

Freeze the desktop

This trick is as old as computers themselves, but people still fall for it hook, line and sinker. All you need to do is take a screenshot of your victim’s desktop, hide all of their icons and then replace their wallpaper with the screenshot. Sit back and smirk as they click repeatedly – but all to no avail.

Swap the speakers

As the Buzzcocks once succinctly observed: noise annoys – and it’s even more irritating when you can’t stop it. To pull off this brand of hijink, simply take your target’s speaker cable and plug it into your PC instead of theirs. Now anything you play on your PC will come through their speakers, whether it’s novelty pop songs, death metal or an array of silly sound effects.

Replace the system sounds

There are two ways to mess with system sounds: straightforward and subtle. Best for those who haven’t much time to fiddle, the straightforward way is to download an assortment of ‘.wav’ files and replace your victim’s common system sounds through the Control Panel. The subtle way is to use a sound editor such as Audacity to insert lots of silence at the beginning of your downloaded sound files. That means there’s a big gap between the event that causes the sound– logging onto Windows, a User Account Control window appearing or anything else you fancy – and your chosen sound effect. We’ve found that terrifying screams are particularly effective.

Bring back Rickrolling

It’s juvenile, it’s not that funny and it was a cliché months ago, but there’s something about Rickrolling – tricking people into seeing Rick Astley’s horrific song ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ – that still amuses us. It couldn’t be easier: find a suitably Rick-tastic clip on YouTube, stick the URL through www.tinyurl.com or www.bit.ly to disguise it and email it to your target as if it’s something really urgent.

Internet Exploder

Filter out their fun

In Internet Explorer, you can use the Content Advisor to block sites that your victims tend to visit regularly – Facebook, Ebay, or Google, for example. To do this, go to ‘Tools | Internet Options | Content’ and then click ‘Enable’. Now click ‘Approved Sites’, enter the domain names to block and hit ‘Never’ to add them to IE’s blocklist.

Cache craziness

For causing maximum chaos with minimal effort, switching the browser’s cache directory to the desktop takes some beating. The result is a victim snowed under with copies of every web page and online image they view. The setting you need lies in ‘Tools | Internet Options | Browsing History | Settings’; click ‘Move Folder’, select the desktop and then press ‘OK’.

Fiddle with the defaults

Here’s an easy one: switch your victim’s homepage to a new and annoying location (or even for a collection of homepages) that will load each time the browser runs. To do this, just alter the homepage specified in IE’ s Options menu. Loud is good if you’re aiming for maximum embarrassment: we like the mellifluous tones of Zombo, but you may prefer something more akin to the website for the incomprehensible kids’ programme Yo Gabba Gabba!

While you’re at it, you can also change the default search provider to something such as the Daily Mail rather than Live Search or Google. To do so, head here, install the provider you want to use and make it the default in Internet Explorer’s main Options screen (‘Search | Settings’).

Eliminate the address bar

It’s easy to hide IE’s various browser toolbars, but to get rid of the address bar as well – and effectively render Internet Explorer useless – you’ll need to employ a quick registry hack. You can find the instructions you need for this here, but remember to take a note of the original settings so you can undo your changes later.

Turn the web upside down

It’s not for the faint hearted, but if you follow the instructions at www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html, you can render every web page your victim views upside down, but leave the rest of their display options intact.

Make Google widiculous

Google’s preferences include a few fun gems that can cause mirth and merriment. For example, you can change the Interface Language to ‘Elmer Fudd’ and see the internet suddenly develop an obsession with that wascally wabbit. Or try ‘Bork, bork, bork!’ to see the search giant presented in the words of the Swedish Chef.

Making Windows Fun

Blue Screen Of Ignorage

The dreaded Blue Screen of Death error message can be summoned at any time with this marvellous BSOD screensaver. It looks just like the real thing, although it can be dismissed pretty easily.

Treat them like a toddler

If you’ve got admin access, Windows Vista’s parental controls can be a hoot: not only can you block specific programs, but you can lock people out of the system altogether at specified times of the day. We’d strongly advise you not to turn on the logging features to find out what people use their computer for, though. The phrase ‘too much information’ definitely applies here.

Abuse accessibility

Windows Narrator (‘Start | Run | Narrator’) is great for people with visual problems, but it can also be used to annoy people. Turn it on and select ‘Echo User’s Keystrokes’ (Vista) or ‘Read Typed Characters’ (XP) to have the Narrator babble on whenever your victim touches the keyboard. For added fun in Vista, click on ‘Voice Settings’ and turn the speed, volume and pitch settings to maximum.

Faking error messages

Visual Basic is a wonderful thing, especially when it’s misused. To write your own suitably scary error message, open Notepad and create a file with the following: ‘x = msgBox(“Scary message goes in here”,,”Window title goes in here”)’. Now save the file and give it the extension ‘.vbs’. To bring up the message, simply double-click the file you’ve just created. Remember to close Notepad, so you won’t give the game away.

Stupid Startup tricks

Anything in the ‘Programs | Startup’ folder launches when Windows runs, so the possibilities for fun are endless. The fake error messages you created in the previous step, internet shortcuts to stupid and/or annoying sites, as many obscure programs as you can think of – simply drag the items into the Startup folder to make someone’s morning start the way you mean it to continue.

Upgrade Windows

Wouldn’t it be great if instead of Windows 2000, XP or Vista, you could give the priceless gift of Windows RG – that is, Windows Really Good Edition? You’ll need to have the Flash plug-in installed and a browser that supports full-screen mode. Turn off the browser’s status bar, hit [F11] and tell your victim it’s Windows 7. However, anyone who falls for this one may need their shoelaces removed for their own safety.