5 Geeky Tricks to Pull this April Fools'
Tomorrow is the first of April. Tomorrow is April Fool's. If you don’t know how to prank your co-workers, friends, family members, and so on, here are a few geeky trick ideas I had in mind.
Before we go any further I have to tell you that these prank ideas work only if you have access to the victim’s computer.
Remap the keyboard, remap the mouse
When you hit the letter A on the keyboard, you expect the letter A to show up in the email you’re typing. Not if the letter A has been remapped to something else. With a free tool like SharpKeys you can set it so the letter A is replaced with the letter Y.
The same goes for using the mouse. When you hit the right mouse button, you expect the right click context menu to appear. Well, if you use a free tool like X-Mouse Button Control, you can set it so the browser launches when the right mouse button is pressed.
An even simpler approach is to open the Mouse Properties window and switch the left and right mouse buttons.
Fake Windows Update screen, fake Blue Screen of Death
If you’re going to set it so the browser launches when the user presses the right click context menu, you could set it so the browser automatically opens a fake Windows Update page. Set the browser to go full screen, and the user will think that his PC is installing updates. If the user types in something and hits the Enter key, he will be presented with the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Speaking about the dreaded BSOD, this webpage lets you pull a fake BSOD prank and Microsoft lets you get a BSOD Screen Saver.
Change what the shortcuts open
Lots of people have shortcuts on the desktop. A shortcut to open their favorite browser, a shortcut to open their favorite word processor, a shortcut to open their favorite media player, and so on. You can very easily change the target of shortcut. When the user click the shortcut for the browser, the media player launches. When the user clicks the shortcut for the word processor, the browser launches. You get the idea!
You can be even more dastardly and create a shortcut that will shutdown the PC. Here is what you have to do: right click the desktop -> New -> Shorcut -> enter the following text without quotation marks “Shutdown.exe -s -t 00” -> name the shortcut. When you’re done, you can change the shortcut’s icon so the victim won’t be suspicious.
Remotely control a PC
With a simple tool like Unified Remote you can use your Android smartphone to control your PC. I mostly use it to remotely pause videos in VLC. But the application can also be used to remotely control the mouse or remotely shutdown the PC.
Schedule a program to launch automatically
Use the Task Scheduler to create a new task - launch a certain program. Use the trigger function and set it so the program is launched every 5 minutes.
Before we go any further I have to tell you that these prank ideas work only if you have access to the victim’s computer.
Remap the keyboard, remap the mouse
When you hit the letter A on the keyboard, you expect the letter A to show up in the email you’re typing. Not if the letter A has been remapped to something else. With a free tool like SharpKeys you can set it so the letter A is replaced with the letter Y.
The same goes for using the mouse. When you hit the right mouse button, you expect the right click context menu to appear. Well, if you use a free tool like X-Mouse Button Control, you can set it so the browser launches when the right mouse button is pressed.
An even simpler approach is to open the Mouse Properties window and switch the left and right mouse buttons.
Fake Windows Update screen, fake Blue Screen of Death
If you’re going to set it so the browser launches when the user presses the right click context menu, you could set it so the browser automatically opens a fake Windows Update page. Set the browser to go full screen, and the user will think that his PC is installing updates. If the user types in something and hits the Enter key, he will be presented with the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Speaking about the dreaded BSOD, this webpage lets you pull a fake BSOD prank and Microsoft lets you get a BSOD Screen Saver.
Change what the shortcuts open
Lots of people have shortcuts on the desktop. A shortcut to open their favorite browser, a shortcut to open their favorite word processor, a shortcut to open their favorite media player, and so on. You can very easily change the target of shortcut. When the user click the shortcut for the browser, the media player launches. When the user clicks the shortcut for the word processor, the browser launches. You get the idea!
You can be even more dastardly and create a shortcut that will shutdown the PC. Here is what you have to do: right click the desktop -> New -> Shorcut -> enter the following text without quotation marks “Shutdown.exe -s -t 00” -> name the shortcut. When you’re done, you can change the shortcut’s icon so the victim won’t be suspicious.
Remotely control a PC
With a simple tool like Unified Remote you can use your Android smartphone to control your PC. I mostly use it to remotely pause videos in VLC. But the application can also be used to remotely control the mouse or remotely shutdown the PC.
Schedule a program to launch automatically
Use the Task Scheduler to create a new task - launch a certain program. Use the trigger function and set it so the program is launched every 5 minutes.
