Computer Pranks

I was looking around on this site and this article caught my eye. It was about hiding text in ADS or Alternate Data Streams. While this is nothing new in the tech world, it seems that more and more people are looking at ADS for one reason or another.

Have you ever noticed that whenever you setup your voicemail account after getting a new cell phone number, it asks you to create a security pin to access your voicemail from other phone lines?

This article will teach you how to make an error similar to this one (also by me). This error message though, is a yes or no question. Clicking yes and no will give different results. Like the previous error message, this is 100% harmless.

This article will show how to make a simple, fake computer error message. These message boxes are 100% harmless, and make for funny pranks. They will display any text you want them to.

After an assumedly nasty break up, Jack Weppler's ex-girlfriend decided to smite him in the most public way possible. The wronged girl uploaded a pile of defamatory images to a picture-hosting website with Weppler's name as the filename, and Google image search did its magic. Labeling this a computer prank may be a stretch—it's probably something more along the lines of psycho-angry-ex-girlfriend-goes-completely-and-utterly-nuts—but it's whip clever, it's DIY, and pretty hilarious.

This is a very simple, but very funny prank to play on your friends using Windows.

Perhaps the two oldest and most-used computer pranks in the book are presented is clear, easy-to-understand language in this video: the printscreen frozen desktop trick and the fake shutdown virus icon trick. If you don't know how to do either of these easy and devestatingly effective pranks, watch on.

Meet Matt Weathers, Biola University math professor and probable blood relative of Mary Poppins. Because, really, who but a Poppins could pull off a prank of this sort? Think Who Framed Roger Rabbit for the PowerPoint set. Or, better yet, see for yourself in the video gallery below:

Here's a quick, simple prank to pull on anyone in under 2 minutes.  It works especially great for someone who has tons of icons on their desktop!  It makes the computer look the same, but nothing on the desktop works!

World of Warcraft is a super fun game, but as anyone who's ruling the game at level 80 (the level cap at the moment) will tell you, getting to 80 is a long and sometimes tedious journey.

The Fake Adult Website Prank is an incredible trick if you happen to have the necessary access and work in the internet industry. Luckily, I had both.

The My Computer section of most PC computers is an absolute mess, especially if you're trying to navigate someone else's computer. Why not take advantage of this fact by pulling this awesome prank on one of your data-loving friends? The video above will show you how to make a folder invisible and then hide it on their computer, making the chances of them finding it without knowing that you've pranked them slim to none. Just make sure you're there to watch you victim freak out afterwards! That's...

Garry's Mod is one of the most popular mods of all time, and has extended the life of the SOURCE Engine family of games by years despite their fairly outdated technology. THis video will teach you how to pull a great prank on your fellow multiplayer players online by creating a level full of comical traps for them to trigger and be confounded by while you laugh and enjoy your pwnage.

This prank is great because it combines the digital and the analog to create a multimedia prank. All you have to do is load up this web page, which looks just like the Google front end. If you follow the instructions in this video, you will learn how to make the two O's in the title disappear from the page. Combined with a little storytelling and misdirection on your part, this can be turned into a trick where you make your friends think that you have magically erased the two O's from Google's...

iChat is gaining steam as a mainstream online chat program. Fortunately for you, you little prankster, it is exceptionally easy to change someone else's iChat away message to whatever hilarious thing you want from your computer! This video will show you exactly how to do it, with no software to download or anything. Aren't easy hacks great?

Aprils Fool's Day is, as the creator of this video so insightfully points out, the only day of the year where you can make up something completely outrageous, tell everyone it's true, then laugh and tell them that it's fake later. This video will show you how to take advantage of this fact and get some laughs by creating a fake online news sensation. By using blogs, fake video testimonials, and calling news stations, you can convince the world of nearly anything, if only for a short time.

If you know someone who loves their computer and has a fear of being shot dead in a firefight, watch this video! It will show you a great prank to pull on just such a person. All you have to do is change the login sound on their computer to something terrifying, like gunshots, crank the volume, and wait for your victim to attempt to log on to their computer. Hilarity and fear will ensue.

Computer pranks are some of the most insidious because computer are so expensive, necessary, and misunderstood by the general public. This video will show you how to take advantage of all of that by writing a quick script that will cause a computer's disc drive to open and close apparently of it's own free will. Great for messing with friends and coworkers at the office.

DOS may be a distant memory for most computer users at this point, but for many it will always be the first thing that pops into their head when they ponder PC computing. Nowadays, the only time most people see anything that even looks like DOS is if they're playing old PC games in a shell or something has gone very, very wrong with their computer. With this prank, you can make your friend believe that the latter has happened to them! All you do is open the DOS command program (Windows XP or...

For many young people, their computer is the most expensive and cherished thing that they own. If you want to pull a prank of them, why not hit them where it hurts? This video presents a novel idea for a computer prank: loading an image of a cracked LCD screen full-screen on their monitor and unplugging their keyboard and mouse. When your victim returns to their computer, it will seem very convincingly broken.

If you'd like to play a nice little prank on someone, this next tutorial will show you a quick and easy one. This involves messing around with someone's computer and in no way will it harm or crash the computer. But, if the person you are playing the prank on gets mad easily, then you might think twice. It involves taking a picture of the shut down, restart, standy-by screen and placing it as the desktop screen. Check out the video and enjoy!

In this video, we learn how to pull a compilation of computer pranks on a friend. The first trip is a mouse prank where you will open up the control panel and find the mouse settings. From here, you can switch the buttons from left to right and change the speeds of the mouse. Next, you can do network pranks by running cmd.exe as administrator. Then, go and see who is on the network and type in "msg /server:(ip address) and message". You can also do a ghost typing prank, which you will create a...

This video in the Pranks & Cons category will show you how to create a non-destructive fake virus on Windows. This video is from Tinkernut. For this right click on your desk top, go to new and select shortcut. Now type in this code 'shutdown 's 't 60 'c "this computer is shutting down; save your work", click next. This code is actually for shutting down the computer. But, you type in the name of the short cut as something else, say for example 'songs ' and click next. What will happen is when...

Johannes Hjorth of Sweden posts a great guide to growing cress in a co-worker's keyboard:

Looking for a fun trick this April Fools Day? Well, if you are in the mood to shake up your coworker or classmate, check out this tutorial.

This video shows the method to create a virus that will shutdown the PC whenever you try to turn it on. This should be done on your own responsibility. The first step involves opening the notepad. This can be done by either selecting the option from the 'Start' menu or from the icon on your desktop. In the following step, type 'cd C:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\startup\

.bat files can be quite dangerous to any machine. Creating and opening these files should be done at your own risk. Sending malicious .bat files over the internet is illegal. This video will show you how to make a virus that crashes your computer.

Pulling a computer virus prank on your friends calls for good laughs. In this video you will learn exactly how to create a non-threatening "shutdown" command and disguise it as a real computer virus.

This video tutorial instructs you on what a key logger is and how to make a key logger which records your computers key strokes for later review. There are software or hardware based key loggers that intercept the connection between the keyboard and computer. Hardware key loggers consists of a micro controller for data logging. Software key logger is a script that runs in the background then processes and saves the key strokes to a text file. To make a key logger you'll need to know a...

Looking to annoy the heck out of someone you dislike? Why not spam their phone a hundred times with a "text bomb" or "SMS bomb"? In this video, learn how to send an SMS bomb by downloading this link. You will need Microsoft's .NET Framework in order to run this program, which you can get at:

Play a spooky prank that preys on the most basic fear that one day haunted computers will rise up and destroy us all.

Puzzled? We were too, when Bryan here at Wonder'HowTo punked us-- hiding this 80's music video in an email entitled 'WonderHowTo on Colbert Report'. Doh! Totally fell for it! Twice.

Watch this video tutorial to learn how to play the Google language computer prank on a coworker. Change your colleague's Google settings with this easy prank, and watch their head spin!

Paste this code: shutdown -s -t 10 -c "Your Message Here"

Newton Virus is the first art virus by Troika.

This video shows you how to make a fake "virus" that shuts down the computer of your victim when they open it. This video also shows you how to email or AIM this prank virus to a friend.

Want to make a prank computer virus for your friends? Well, this video tutorial will show you just how to make a fake virus on a PC. You'll need to open up Notepad to do this fake virus, and just type start eight times. Then just hit enter twice and type in hax.bat. Save the file as hax. Save it in your documents folder. When you open the MS-DOS Batch File, you won't be able to do anything but restart your computer.

Bored at the office? Try out the practical joke in this how-to video. Rick Roll your friends and co-workers. The more you do it, the funnier it gets. You can disguise the link by typing in any random url into the e-mail, right clicking and clicking 'edit hyperlink' then paste the url to the video in the box there and click 'OK.' Check out the video computer pranks tutorial and learn how to Rick Roll.