Awesome computer prank

This is for all you tech minded people with non tech minded friends.
Do this on their computers NOT yours!

Step 1 Screen dump

Take a screen dump of the victim's desktop and then set it as their backround

Comments

[gonturan]

Grrr, mine came first and works better! You can't even right click on the desktop. The windows button won't work either.

[Javin007]

The first sentence of yours: "I know Instructables on how to do this are already out there. Don't tell me that, please."

Hypocrite much?

[super moderator]

Meh, what's done is done.(sorry) BTW the start button doesn't work on mine either. At the moment I have my fingers in many different pies and am planning to write several more instructables on different subjects so I can't spend too much time on each one.

[ketan7s]

Hallo, I have another safe idea. Do the PrtScr and set it as desktop background as you said, but Instead of hiding taskbar and deleting the icons, bring out the task manager Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and end the 'explorer.exe' task. Thats it :D. You can bring the explorer back by doing New Task in the Task Manager. :D

[super moderator]

That's better than my idea but in my case even though I love working with computers just messing with things at that level just for a prank kind of creeps me out.

[Brillo_87]

I've done a similar trick to this except you replace their background with the appropriate "blue screen of death" for their OS... usually they pull the plug on their PC before they realize its a trick!

[super moderator]

There's this screen saver which copies a BSOD. It pretends to reboot the computer and it whirs the hard drive as well. Freaks people out!!

[mr.incredible]

Instead of deleting the desktop icons, and risk loosing them. Right click on the desktop. Choose "Arrange Icons By" uncheck "Show Desktop Icons" That may only work on XP though.

[super moderator]

Yea thanks for the tip. I did this on my computer and managed to restore all my icons. The only trouble I had was with recycle bin but all I had to do was bring it back using the control panel

[PKM]

Restoring icons is fine but some people (myself shamefully included) leave files on the desktop as well as shortcuts. Some browsers have the irritating habit of downloading to the desktop by default which doesn't help- if they do that then you may be deleting actual files. I'm normally not a great fan of "computer prank" instructables, but you're new so I'll let you off my ranting :)

[super moderator]

Thanks. I only entered this one because I wanted to get some practice writing instructables and when I saw the April fool's challenge I thought why not? Thanks for the advice

[lemonie]

Did anyone ever tell you that "awesome" is synonymous with "ignore"? (nicer presentation than others doing the same that went before this) L

[super moderator]

Thanks for that. I just thought that awesome meant really really cool. (well at least it does in Australian dialect)

[lemonie]

Avoid "awesome" - it tends to be used inappropriately. "Simple", "easy", and "quick" (or even "cool") could describe this - there are so many exaggerated things that are tagged with "awesome" that you risk being viewed in the same way. Kill someone with this, start a riot, bring down a govenment - awesome. Annoy someone a bit - not.

L

[super moderator]

Thanks, I tend to be not very socially minded when it comes to writing these things (I'm not very good socially in general).

[lemonie]

(I've been looking at various things), there are some words which are used a lot - it's what you do that really matters here, not how it's described. L

[super moderator]

Thanks BTW did you know that Nice is synonymous with Average?

[lemonie]

I know what you mean, but it's the way that you say it...

L

[maenumania]

Don't delete the icons, there's an easier way, just right click on the desktop, choose "Arrange Icons by" and then just uncheck the "Show Desktop Icons". It's better than delete the icons