Harmless Computer Practical Jokes (Updated)

I wrote the original article a few years back, and its turned out to be one of the most popular articles on my site. I don't like to rehash old content, and I should have released this on April fool's day, but no use crying over spilt milk. A lot of the text below is from the original article, but I have added new content and updated some of the older content.

I have to admit I love to play a good practical joke on my friends as long as its harmless. The problem is, how do you make sure that you don't hurt the victim, computer, or its data.

Below are a few suggestions for some computer practical jokes. If you have any other suggestions, please post them in the comments:

Notes: Perform these practical jokes at your own risk, I am not responsible for the results. I would never recommend using any of these tricks then leaving the victim to their own devices. You should stay close, hopefully laugh with them, then help them to undo what you did.

Keyboards and Mice:

• Remove the ball from the computer's mouse on the older mechanical mouse. If its the newer optical mouse, stick a small piece of tape over the optical sensor.
• Unplug the mouse and/or keyboard from the back of the computer. If its a wireless keyboard or mouse remove the batteries from the device.
• If several people in your office use wireless keyboards and mice and they are in close proximity to each other, you can reprogram the wireless receivers, to pickup the other user's keyboard and/or mouse.
• This trick is just mean, and can be a little tricky to reverse. Remap the computer keyboard to Dovark layout.
• From the Start menu open the Control Panel folder
• Open the 'Regional and Language Options' applet
• Click the 'Keyboards and Languages' tab, then press the 'Change Keyboards...' button
• Press the 'Add' button
• Check 'United States-Dvorak' then press the OK button.
• Under 'Default input language' section at the top of the 'Text Services and Input Languages' dialog, select the 'United States-Dvorak' option
• Press the OK button

Cables

• Almost every computer is a rat's nest of cables, removing or unpluging the right cable (power, network, keyboard, etc.) can cause frustration for the computer user.
• Any good computer user will have a surge suppressor power strip where their computer is plugged into. Some of these power strips have a breaker, sometimes they manually allow you to blow the breaker. This will basically make the power strip a useless piece of junk until the breaker is reset. (Warning: make sure that all the equipment is off before you blow the breaker)
  

Desktop

• This is a cool little trick, its called the 'Broken LCD Screen'. All you have to do is replace the background of your victims desktop, and it looks like they have a broken LCD screen.
  
• Open up MS Paint (under Start menu | All Programs | Accessories)
• From the File menu select Open. Then paste the following URL into the file name field: http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/3028/crackedscreen1920x12802mj.jpg
• From the File menu, select 'Save As Background (Stretched)'
  
• This trick will drive the end-user mad, they will try to click on the desktop and believe the computer is frozen when nothing works. I have seen people reboot their computer several times before they figured out what is wrong. Use with caution, save all the user's work before using this trick.
  
• Take a screen shot of the computer's desktop (press PrtSc screen button). You might want to try taking the screen shot with open application windows, it might add to the realism.
  
• Then open a graphics program like MS Paint (under Start menu | All Programs | Accessories) and Paste the image into the application. Save the file into the C:\WINDOWS\ directory as a bitmap file (.BMP) and set it as the desktop background. (Note: if you're using MS Paint there is a command under the File menu to do this.)
• Then remove the icons from the users desktop, put them in a another folder under the user's 'My Document' folder. Or, you can right-click an empty space on the user's desktop, and uncheck 'Arrange Icons By > Show Desktop Icons' (Note: you may have to cycle through [press Alt-Tab] an application that fills the screen to force the desktop to refresh it self)
  
• For extra realism, you can hide the taskbar at bottom of the screen. (Hover the mouse over the top edge of the bar until you see the up/down arrow, then click and drag the taskbar to the bottom of the screen)

Miscellaneous:

• Turn the speaker volume up real loud on their computer and walk away.
• Try playing with the computer settings, such as the monitor, cursor, mouse and keyboard configuration in the Control Panels.
• Change the startup or other event sounds (such as changing the new mail sound, to something like the sound of someone passing gas [you know what I mean])
• Embed the following link into an email, and send it to your friends (http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/891/3dtetris8yi.swf). I promise they will hate you after you send it.

Items for Sale:

• Phantom Keystroker: Attach this evil prank device to your victim's computer and it makes random mouse movements and types out odd garbage text and phrases.
• Annoy-a-tron: A little device designed to annoy people with a nearly undetectable intermittent beep. This device has a magnet attached, so it can be placed on any metal surface.