Great Computer Prank That Will Drive Your Friends Nuts
Entertaining Media, Random Bloggery, Top Posts All Time Add commentsI’ve done this one before on a couple of my fellow geeks. It’s super easy to do and will have even the most savvy individual scratching their head.
Step 1: First thing you need to do is take a screen shot of the victims desktop. Since I’m a designer I use the, “Print Screen”, option and then just paste into Photoshop. Make sure to get the bottom taskbar in the shot. The idea is to emulate the person’s desktop exactly.
Step 2: Once you have your screen shot cropped and saved set it as the desktop. To do this right click on the desktop and click on Properties. This will pull up the Display Properties panel.
Step 3: Right click on the desktop again and select, “Arrange Icons By”. Make sure to uncheck, “Show Desktop Icons”. This will hide their icons. See where I’m going with this?
Step 4: Right click on the taskbar and make sure to uncheck,”Lock the Taskbar”. Once you do this drag the task bar to the top of the screen.
Step 5: Right click on the bottom taskbar and go to properties. Click on, “Auto-hide the taskbar”.
The task bar will then disappear leaving the screen shot you took of the desktop with the icons in it’s place. The victim wont be able to open any files on the desktop or run any programs from the taskbar. Like I said I’ve done this to a couple buddies and watched them restart after restart start to pull out their hair. It’s a good obnoxious one that is harmless to the PC. Happy Pranking.
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August 6th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
This is old, I did this in ‘95…
August 6th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Great trick… Another fun thing to do would be to create some sort of embarrassing link on the desktop (porn site or something) so that it’s on the middle of the screenshot and they can’t move it or delete it!
August 6th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Charlie D - Ha that’s a great idea! I’ll have to do that next time.
DocZayus - Kudos on being so savvy so long ago. Would you care for a cookie? Does this make this trick any less funny?
August 6th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
That is still a pretty funny joke, even that it is an old joke. The way people are attached to their computers in this day and age, some people may get get way too stressed out and want some pay back.
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August 6th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Yeah, but that’s what makes it a good prank. It still cracks me up. I am pretty juvenile though.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Wow, never heard this one before.
August 7th, 2008 at 2:41 am
way to do what has been done 5 million times by idiots. It doesnt even fool them anymore… it would never fool a computer pro.
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August 7th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Just stumbled on your blog via entrecard drops. Man, this computer prank is in fact very old. I remember doing it when I was 10!
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August 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Wow I didn’t realize that this was an old bit. I’d never heard about this before. I did it on a buddy recently and it drove him nuts. I must be getting old.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Lol… That’s ok , i think it still can work out
August 10th, 2008 at 4:57 am
I was a victim of this prank in 2003…by none other than the author! HA! I have since used it and it stumps people long enough to make me giggle uncontrollably…I suppose that I to am juvenile.
Also, the average computer user would never be able to figure this out and would have to call upon a “PRO” to help them figure it out. I would 9 out of 10 would be stumped. The more I work with the public the more I realize just how stupid people are, especially people that…well never mind - I will try to curb my juvenile side right now.
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September 19th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
This is certainly an oldie but goodie. Still one of my favorites!
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September 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
a better way to do this is to take the screenie, set it as the background, then end explorer.exe this looks perfect, and is a little more complicated to fix (ctrl+alt+del, then run explorer)
September 30th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Ha. I’ll have to try that one Sean. Thanks for the heads up.