Computer Practical Jokes

A few of my own. Some are original, some aren't.

-- The classic "frozen desktop" joke. Take a screenshot of the desktop, put it up as the background, and hide icons and taskbar. (Alternatively, you can kill explorer.exe).
-- Put a tiny piece of packing tape over the bottom of the optical mouse. On ball mouses, remove the ball.
-- Popping in a Knoppix CD and booting from it and leaving it. Confuses people.
-- (Haven't tried this one yet) Putting an icon on the desktop to what looks like a commonly used program. However, it would shut down the computer.
-- This was in grade 7 or 8. I switched the keyboards around with the PC next to me. The girl couldn't figure out why the keyboard wasn't working. She opened wordpad, and I started typing "STOP POUNDING ON ME!!! IT HURTS!!!!" This is one of the ones I got in trouble for.
-- Also in grade 7 or 8, I'd use the video properties to either flip the screen upside down or make it lime green. Nobody ever found this out.
-- For the startup sound, have a weird/funny/inappropiate sound. Turn up the speakers all the way, shutdown the PC, and walk away.

 

roflmao Aimee - you honey are a piece of work!!!!! You keeps us giggling!!!:-D

 

What a warped and twisted mind. Reminds me of an evil genius from a Bond film. In a frock.

 

And she is still sooooo young!!

 

Yup. Not in mind, though, clearly.

 

My daughter's Ten. Will not let the mum touch her HP Tablet. These kids are sharp.. with fab Gizmos

 

Prise off a few keys and swap them around, that'll confuse a few people.

 

Jamming the ALT key down with a peice of paper or match,its fun watching someone think they are infected with malware :-D

Thats great :-D

 

Hi Aimee, that is hillarious! roflmaoroflmaoroflmao Thank you for sharing that with us!

 

Change the default keyboard from US/Eng to something like Swedish or Cyrillic. Some will swear they have a virus. Or reverse the mouse buttons between left and right click. I've actually had customers do this to themselves, without actually realising what they were doing.rolleyes

 

For an optical mouse: Put a piece of tape over the laser and cover it with black sharpie, so the laser can't read anymore. Mouse stops working. User turns it over, find tape, removes it and feels smug. Except, the mouse still isn't working. Why? Because the slip of paper that you put between the mouse's USB connector and the connectors in the port is still there.

Works every time

 

Here's another:

A few years back, I put a screensaver on mom's computer that had the screen "melt." She was freaked out, thinking the monitor was dying. Then I came in and wiggled the mouse.
This is the most similar screensaver to what I used. (The "melt" is in the options.)

 

BSOD screensaver is the best.

I have also configured people's machine to let me remotely reboot the machine before.

 

A fun variation to the 'frozen desktop' is to take a picture of the wall behing the monitor. Then make that the desktop. Takes a little work, but looks cool. I need to do mine again one day.
:-D

 

Back in school, we could flip the screen layout to be upside down or to a side just by pressing ctrl + alt + arrow key. Would confuse teachers

 

One time at work, with an individual who I knew would have a sense of humour...


A guy orders an anti-glare shield for his LCD. I order it for him and advise him of the status.

The next day, I had to do a 21" LCD install for a guy up in a similar part of the building....

So, as a joke, I took the protective film that came on the new monitor as part of shipping and peeled it off very carefully.

I then walked over to the guy waiting for the anti glare shield, and I applied the protective film to his LCD. I then took duct tape and taped it all around the edges.

It looked like total hell, and was all wrinkled and obviously not its intended purpose. I then left him a note saying I had installed his anti glare shield and was "Really happy" with how it turned out, and to let me know if he had any problems.

About an hour after I left his desk (he was in a meeting at the time of install) i get a call from him. The funny part is he didn't know what to say because he thought I was being totally serious.

This probably wont come across very well through the forums, but his reaction made me nearly pee my pants.

I had a voicemail that was similar to:

"Hi there, thank you so much for installing my glare shield. I just need to ask, maybe can you check if this is installed properly? It seems a little bit wrinkled? Could you help me with this wrinkle? It is working very well and the glare is cut down but its just this one wrinkle...."


LOL.... good times. :cry

 

When I was in college, I had a broken pointer finger on my mousing hand. I switched the mouse to left handed at home and learned to click with my pinky, not too hard.

I switched the mouse to left handed in my CADD class in college, and you'd have thought the teacher was going to flip. Nobody could figure out why the darn mouse wasn't working like it should.

The best part is, when I explained that I did it because of my injury, they left the mouse like that for everyone else until I was healed. LOL

I heard before that if you take apart a 3.5" floppy disk, and replace the flim in it with sand paper, then crush up strike anywhere matches and put the dust in the disk as well, you can make quite a show. I've never tried it though, might not work.

With the keyboard, I tried to learn Dvork for a while, that wasn't a practical joke, but even I use to get so mad about not knowing where the keys where.

 

You would do that to a computer?!?!??! :eek

 

roflmao thats classic