A great classic is [H]ardOCP’s famous BSOD Screen Saver. It’s a great torture trick for the illiterati.
The W9x startup and shutdown screens can be altered to taste. I think they’re called LOGO.SYS and and LOGOS.SYS. They sit in C:\WINDOWS. I used Photoshop to alter the flying window into a flying swastika, with the slogan, “taking over the world one computer at a time.”
This works under any version of Windows at least up to 9x; I’m not sure about NT, ME, etc.
Make sure you have ansi.sys loaded in your config.sys, and put this command in your autoexec.bat:
prompt $e[s$e[=7l$e[0;60f$e[31;1m$d $t $e[0m$e[u$p$g$e[=7h
Now every DOS window/screen has not only the usual disk/path prompt, but up in the upper right corner of the screen you will have date and time, bright red, in the form of “Thu 02-08-2001 13:20”.
I’ve been using this one for years…
– Bob
Alot of you seem to be pretty good hackers, I have a question that I’m hoping you can answer.
Soon everyone in the department will be forced to upgrade to the evil NT. Currently, I’m using 95 which I think rocks because of the control factor. Unfortunately, we have I.T. people that must have been members of the S.S. in an earlier life, hence, won’t allow administrative privledges to any of the NT users. Is there some file I can hack or even a motherboard jumper setting that I can change which would override this?
Having to call these pinheads whenever you have to install upgrades etc. is really a pain in the arse.
tanx
No clue, myself, but you may want to stick a post in GQ. Seems to be a few extra techs in there.
Ah, yes…IT people. Ours always want to take our machines away to their dungeons and reroll them with their brain-damaged “standard office environment” which horribly impairs performance and prevents us from doing anything useful.
I don’t let them touch mine, and they don’t know my admin password. I just wiped the drive and started over (I had to anyway, to get rid of their crap), but for password recovery without reinstall I use a linux boot disk. You can find a decent explanation and some relevant links at is-it-true.org. There are a lot of other handy and just plain neat NT hacks and tweaks on that site, as well. Use them at your own risk, though–some of them can hose up your machine to a fare-thee-well.
I seem to recall mention of a registry hack that would change the BSOD to a GSOD, or any other colour you fancied. Any takers, or is it a myth?
Can anyone puhhhleez point me to where I can go to figure out how to change the “Windows 98” text when you click the start button? I’ve tried regedit.com winscript.com, is-it-true. Any help would be vunderful.
How to change the BSOD to another color:
x and y are each one of the following values
0 - Black
1 - Blue
2 - Green
3 - Cyan
4 - Red
5 - Magenta
6 - Yellow/brown
7 - White
8 - Gray
9 - Bright blue
A - Bright green
B - Bright cyan
C - Bright red
D - Bright magenta
E - Bright yellow
F - Bright white
Then just save, and wait until the next SOD! (Usually not more than a 5-minute wait.)
Thanks, BlackKnight!!!
<Tips Hat in Admiration>
I like litestep, too. However, I never use it because I like being able to drag icons and junk onto the desktop and the few modules that would allow you to do that never feel right. It also doesn’t support my dual monitor setup very well (a dual monitor setup itself qualifies as a stupid computer trick in my opinion. 
).
Hm. Current favorite dumb computer trick is the “undeletable folders” ploy.
Open up a dos box (start–>programs–>ms dos prompt)
type: “cd c:\windows\desktop” to switch to the windows desktop. Now, type “mkdir I_am_a_Mouthbreathing_Imbecile”
EXCEPT, instead of typing an underscore, hold down the alt key and type 255 with the numberpad. While you’re here, you might as well make another 30 or 40 of them, for effect.
This will create a new folder on the desktop entitled “I am a Mouthbreathing Imbecile” Windows interprets the Ascii 255 as a space, but since it’s not really a full space, it can’t really deal with it directly. Whenever you try to rename or delete it from the normal windows explorer or desktop interface, you’ll get an error message.
The only way to rename it or remove it is to get back into an ms-dos prompt and type “rmdir I_am_a_Mouthbreathing_Imbecile” with the same Ascii code replacing the underscores.
If you want to be even more of an annoying bastard, try using a code other than 255…
If you want to be REALLY obnoxious, edit COMMAND.COM to change the rmdir and rd commands to something like xweri and lp (i.e., just random, highly un-guessable strings of characters).
BTW, I’m glad to see this thread back from the dead!
Thanks man, looks like a pretty good site, got it bookmarked for my attack on I.T. when the dark days come.
I just ran across a couple of links for really amusing (and cruel) things you can do to your coworkers computers. Enjoy:
http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00015.asp
http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00019.asp
Part 1 and 2 of Little White Dog’s Manual of Evil.