In the previous article, I wrote about how to prank your friends using the inbuilt features in Windows 7.

This time, for extra fun, here are some small and harmless applications that will aid you in your quest for mischief.

Fake Format

Imagine your friend going out for a cup of coffee and coming back to find out that his precious files are being deleted. This application will do just that by creating an illusion of formatting the hard disk.

Just open it, select the ‘Full’ option and click ‘start’. Watch as your friend frantically presses the ‘Cancel’ button in vain. It even displays a summary just like the standard windows summary.

The only way to close this app is to wait for it to finish fake formatting and then press close. It closes with a nice little message that your friend has been pranked.

Fake Format

Random Burper

If you want to find out how your colleague at office looks when he is red-faced with embarrassment, then you should try this app.

Open it and lo, it runs a hidden program that burps at random intervals. I am not talking about the small ones. Big and loud, brother! The ones you get after eating umpteen number of cheese burgers.

The app has an inbuilt feature to increase the system volume to max so that it is loud and clear. The only way to close this app is to move the mouse pointer to the far top left of the screen and out pops up an about us screen and the program is closed.

loud and clear!

Mr. Clippy

The office assistant in the older versions of MS Office was discontinued due to, frankly, I don’t know why. I always liked the puppy.

And most of us may be familiar with the default assistant, Mr Clippy. Now it is available as a prank application that when run shows up at regular intervals (60 secs by default) displaying useless notifications.

Customize the notifications by creating a text file as “clippy.txt” in the folder where the application is located and typing messages that you like in it. A message with a question mark is displayed with yes/no buttons.
The time interval can be customized by navigating to the folder where the application is using the command window and typing “clippy.exe [time interval] [norandom]”.

The norandom option tells Clippy not to display messages at random, a useful feature when displaying custom messages.

Annoying Clippy

The only way to close this app is to move the mouse pointer to the far top left of the screen. An about screen pops up and the application is closed automatically.

Blue Screen of Death

“When the shadow of death blots out my joy
And erases the face of the sun…” – William L. Wallace

What better way is there to make your friend panic than the dreaded Blue Screen error? No wonder it has been known as the “Blue Screen of Death”.

Behold the BSOD screensaver which is capable of scaring the wits out of your unsuspecting friend, at least momentarily. This screensaver simulates a Windows blue screen error accurately. For this to work properly,

• Move the screensaver to Windows->System 32 folder.
• Then right click on the desktop and select personalize.
• Open screensaver settings and select “Sysinternals Bluescreen”.

This application cycles between different Blue Screens and simulated boots once in every 15 seconds.

Give ‘em the Finger

It appears and disappears fast. But it delivers a powerful message in a short and sweet way. This is my favorite prank application.

Run this on an unsuspecting friend’s computer and watch how he reacts when his mouse gives him the finger.  You can configure the finger to flash at intervals of your choice by navigating via command prompt to the folder where the Finger is and typing “Finger.exe [interval]”.

the mouse tells you to...

Auto Correct Prank

This is not an application that can be downloaded, rather an alternate use for the auto correct option in MS Word.

The autocorrect feature in MS Word is highly useful especially in case of typographic errors. But how can you use it to prank someone? It is quite simple.

• Open “Word Options” from the start menu (I use MS Word 2007).
• Under “Proofing” select “Autocorrect Options”
• Type the text you want to replace in the “replace” text box and the alternate text in the “with” text box. For example replace “Dear sir” with (dunno if appstorm will allow me).

Auto prank

Note: Opening some of these applications may cause your antivirus to go bezerk. But, as far as I know, they do not contain any virus.

Wrapping Up

So there you go — a handful of ways to drive your friends and colleagues crazy. Have you tried any of these yet? Any hilarious results? Let us know in the comments below and thank you so much for readgin!