here's a quick little practical joke that you can do to your friend, (or computer illiterate enemy)

close all windows and everything on the screen, so all that is seen is the icons on the desktop. move the mouse off the screen, and hit 'print screen'. open paint, and paste the image, then save it. set the image as the wallpaper, then right-click on the desktop, 'Arrange icons By' and uncheck 'Show Desktop items.'

if you did it right, you shouldn't see any difference. but it just removed his icons from the desktop, leaving the wallpaper you just put there. that looks exactly the same.

don't worry, it's easily fixed the same way it was done, but if done without the subject's knowledge, it can drive them mad, until you walk in and fix thier problem in about two seconds.

I'm never going to forgive that kid...

here's a quick little practical joke that you can do to your friend, (or computer illiterate enemy)

close all windows and everything on the screen, so all that is seen is the icons on the desktop. move the mouse off the screen, and hit 'print screen'. open paint, and paste the image, then save it. set the image as the wallpaper, then right-click on the desktop, 'Arrange icons By' and uncheck 'Show Desktop items.'

if you did it right, you shouldn't see any difference. but it just removed his icons from the desktop, leaving the wallpaper you just put there. that looks exactly the same.

don't worry, it's easily fixed the same way it was done, but if done without the subject's knowledge, it can drive them mad, until you walk in and fix thier problem in about two seconds.

I'm never going to forgive that kid...

um ok... this was done during the 1995 days.....

If you want to get a bit more creative.. hack ascii.sys and switch "Y" and "N"

then run a batch job to format c: when prompted Are You Sure.......

Ok another good one.. change the printing forecolor for all fonts to white...

reverse the X and Y axis for the mouse...

Shall I continue?

Yes I am a cruel person.. but I don't care

i've done the 'all white' one to my buddy... took him an hour to get it straight again... and i've set someone's desktop style to entirely black before... it was an idiot freshman who forgot to log off... he needed to be taught a lesson.

Another funny spin on this is to take a screen shot of how their desktop currently is, windows and all, and make that the desktop background. Then, minimize all their windows, and revel as they click on the background, thinking those are their real windows!

A nice joke is to set windows-services:
Windows Audio (XP)
Turn it off(not disable). Until the next restart, he wont hear anythink.

Or in regedit set showlegalnotice to 1 and to LegalNoticeText write:
"Your computer is under the control of E.T."- or somethink like that.
:evil:

" WARNING: The radiation shield on your monitor has failed! Please duck under your desk now and cry for help from your local IT Professional! "

commented: hehehe evil :P +4

Please can you explain how to switch the X and Y of the mouse, that really is a great prank!

Go to controll Panel and right click mouse icon...to Properties...it is there

Hehe alot of underhandedness in this thread :D

Just Press
CTRL+Alt+RIGHTARROW

see what happens

I dont wanna even try :D

What happens?

Welcome to the site!

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.