Top 10 Tech Pranks: Harmless but Funny IT jokes

[dkpope]

Pranks are awesome. And you're a tech-savvy individual, so it's time that your pranks showed that. We've got some ideas.

Permalink to review.

https://www.techspot.com/article/1139-tech-pranks/

 

[thorpj]

For budding developers, create a little program that makes the mouse jitter randomly, and have random keyboard inputs. Then after a minute or two, have a popup "You're computer is overheating" or "_____ has stopped responding"

Quality.

Edit: Where I first saw the idea:

. Mess with your friends, and learn a little bit about an interesting skill

 

[mrtraver]

Another simple fun one that always gets a "WTF?" is to press the victim's num lock or scroll lock key.

 

[TechnoSapien]

Ones I've used in the past for a chuckle...
- Reset all Windows UI colors to black for their account. (Can be quickly done with a REG file)
- Set their mouse pointer to an invisible icon.
- Create a web shortcut to an embarrassing website (eg. Incontinence Control Undergarments). Change the shortcut of one their programs (eg. Email) to the web shortcut instead (making sure to keep the original app icon).

 

[Panda218]

The iPhone autocorrect phrase is a great one! I did it last year to our old Mobile administrator at work. I replaced "no" with "Sure, what can I assist you with" cause he was king of always telling people no. He was not a happy camper when he finally realized what was happening lol

My prank this year doesn't have any tech involved. Just tape and an air horn rigged under a colleagues chair. I even painted the air horn all black in hopes he wouldn't notice it. I'm very excited for him to return on Friday.

 

[dgast]

Be careful using someone else's computer in a professional environment. In a healthcare that could possibly get you fired.

 

[Nitrotoxin]

Put the blue screen of death for Windows as a wallpaper and unplug their peripherals... or the gray apple screen of death for macs....so fun! =)

 

[Greg S]

You guys should check out the Vista upgrade prank. It's hilarious when done right to tech people.

 

[DjKraid]

The first "prank" here is only a partial prank...you have forgotten the best parts.
1. Take a screenshot of the desktop.
2. Turn that screenshot up-side-down and save it under temp (or where ever you want).
3. Rotate the display so that it's up-side-down (as in the 1st prank here).
4. Set the screenshot you took as the background pic, it should now look as if all is ok, the mouse is just "broken".
5. Open taskmanager and kill explorer.exe

 

[cliffordcooley]

Or you could simply change the monitor orientation in [Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Display > Screen Resolution] settings by 90 or 180 degrees. The options are Landscape, Portrait, Landscape (Flipped), and Portrait (Flipped).

 

[Emexrulsier]

I like setting wallpapers, then going into policy editor and disabling changing wallpapers

 

[Adhmuz]

This will be a fun week I think, so many things to do to unsuspecting computers, and best of all I have multiple options to unleash on my unsuspecting co-workers, I can even get the same person with multiple pranks. Time to put on my sneaking shoes and get to work.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Awesome article. With a good 48 hours to plan our victims before April Fools.

 

[p51d007]

I use to volunteer in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's as a 911 operator. "Back in the day", we had to do everything on paper, had only 1 terminal to run wanted checks, licenses etc. Around 95, we got computers to do everything. We had one dispatcher, one of my best friends, older lady who was scared to death of computers. One evening, I was about to go off shift. I went into the control panel, changed the scrolling message screen saver, to not kick in unless nothing was touched for over an hour, which means it wouldn't trigger until 2-3am, when it died down.
Even after I left at midnight, I'd stay up til 3-4am on Friday night/Saturday morning.
My phone ran about 2:30 am. The voice on the other end said... "I'm going to KILL you the next time I see you".
Why? Well the message that blanked out the screen and started scrolling said "Critical hard drive error, all data lost on C:\. Contact your administrator to have system installed".
We all had a good laugh about that one.

 

[Puiu]

FORMAT C: is the best prank

 

[mrvco]

And this is just another reason why I set all my computers and devices to require a password.

 

[Satish Mallya]

Well the message that blanked out the screen and started scrolling said "Critical hard drive error, all data lost on C:\. Contact your administrator to have system installed".
We all had a good laugh about that one.

There's an awesome way to do this randomly through Windows Task Scheduler - check out the tutorial here www youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

 

[DAOWAce]

People actually let others use their computer?

Also, that cracked screen thing.. most LCDs out there aint made of glass!

 

[senketsu]

No. 7 kills me, using task manager to cause something to occur repetitively. Goes from what the heck, to frustration to full blown anger as fast as you set it to occur

edit: as timely as ever, even if I am first to post for last 2 years

 

[Julio Franco]

As timely as ever, even if I am first to post for last 2 years

#ThrowbackThursday Pranks are awesome

 

[TheBigT42]

There was a guy in our office that spliced into a coworkers speaker wire. He would then run strange sounds on via his coworkers speakers. He told IT about it so we would not fix it...I was happy to help

 

[Uncle Al]

Hmmmm .... mine are a bit dated; from stealing the mouse ball or substituting it with a stainless steel ball bearing to createing a batch file (days of DOS and windows 98) that said across the screen "Turn the computer off quick, it's about to explode" ...... mind you, this was the same time that most people through the CD ROM tray was actually a coffee cup holder .................. oh, the good old days!

 

[Neojt]

My guys know that if they leave their PC unattended and unlocked they will have my classic left hand mouse click switch.. hilarious to watch since all you left click will be right clicks

 

[PinothyJ]

When one of the guys at work is responding to a particularly painful ticket, it is not unusual to see him typing madly with his head face down on his desk. Walking by silently and pressing the Caps Lock key is always a winner. Double points if you can do it again before he finishes to turn it back off again.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Oh man, we used to do this ALL the time to a fellow classmate..

He would leave his computer unlocked (derp) and we would go to town. We under-clocked his CPU, turned off 3 of 4 cores, under-clocked his RAM as low as it would go, ece.

After he refused to learn his lesson, we would load a script to turn off and on all 3 keyboard locks 10 times per second. Combined with his still under-clocked internals, it made for a rather...slow day for him.