How to annoy a Windows user in less than 20 seconds

Posted by Greg Laden on October 6, 2008
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But it will take some practice.

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Comments

  1. #1 Tony P
    October 6, 2008

    That’s an old one. We used to do this on our public machines. It drove people crazy.

    That said, here is how to elicit screams of anguish from an OS-X or Linux user:

    COMMENT SECTION DELETED BECAUSE IT IS EVIL

  2. #2 charfles
    October 6, 2008

    Used to do exactly this at the lab all the time. The best is if you have the time to make a smiley face with all the icons before you do the print screen.

  3. #3 david zhivkovich
    October 6, 2008

    um duhgh…..

    try making a shortcut to

    C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 60 -”you just got pwned”

  4. #4 david zhivkovich
    October 6, 2008

    um duhgh…..

    try making a shortcut to

    C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 60 -”you just got pwned”

    change name and icon to firefox, and replace this shortcut w/ the real one.

    if they never end up just resorting to IE…. give ‘em a big pat on the back!!!

    (ps. the ONLY way to stop the shutdown timer is going to run and typing “shutdown -a” without the quotes)

  5. #5 Joel
    October 6, 2008

    Yup, that’s an old one.

  6. #6 Who Cares
    October 7, 2008

    If you have more time you can hide the picture in an overlay.
    That stumps most people on how to restore the background.
    And if you have a lot of time you can even stick some form of script in the webpage you are using as overlay to prevent right click use.

    (The things we did while studying :)

  7. #7 Greg Laden
    October 7, 2008

    What about the overlay with the icons as flash object that won’t let the mouse cursor near them???? (Like that old “how to keep an idiot busy” trick)

  8. #8 Dunc
    October 7, 2008

    Well, if somebody set my desktop to that stupid TellyTubbies theme, that would certainly annoy me in less than 20 seconds.

  9. #9 arby
    October 7, 2008

    This is about 40 steps easier on a mac. There, got it in the correct thread on the second try.

  10. #10 chris
    October 7, 2008

    Why would you want to do this? If you did it to me, I’d just think you’re a dick.

  11. #11 Who Cares
    October 7, 2008

    Well the flash would have been fun too :D
    That other trick was easier on 3.11 since it was a no-brainer to catch any form of escape. I had to actually work to do that on 95/XP

  12. #12 Theo Bromine
    October 9, 2008

    Well, juvenile pranks do have their time and place – I thought it was kinda funny and clever when my pre-teen kids did something similar to me, a number of years ago.

  13. #13 MarkD
    October 14, 2008

    The same juvenile stuff works in linux. Try changing the default in inittab to runlevel 6 or 0.

    On the IBM 1401 we used to mess with the bootstrap deck to make it read all the cards and do nothing. It wasn’t very funny then.