Who, Me? Welcome to another instalment of Who, Me? It’s The Register‘s Monday column that shares your stories of mistakes, occasional malice, and how you came out the other side.
This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Marcus,” who told us that in the early 2000s he toiled in a workplace that required workers to lock their Windows NT and Windows 95 workstations before stepping away from their desks.
“All sorts of shenanigans could ensue if you did not,” he admitted. But after a while the thrill of sending fake ILOVEYOU virus emails ebbed.
Marcus and some other colleagues eventually came up with the following prank:
- Snap a screenshot of whatever was on the screen
- Open PowerPoint and paste into a blank presentation.
- Set up the presentation so it would loop until the user pressed “ESC.”
- Hit “Present.”
Marcus reminded us that when PowerPoint was in loop mode, Windows would not run a screensaver.
The screenshot slideware was therefore hard to stop, because just one keypress could restore a victim’s PC.
“Our victims would pointlessly move the mouse and click on things,” Marcus confessed. “If we were lucky, they’d hold a button down and draw a random stripe across the screen leading to utter confusion and panic.”
Marcus and his mates would take mercy on their colleagues if they saw them contemplating a hard reboot.
“We didn’t want them to lose work,” he said.
But that little act of magnanimity wasn’t typical.
“We made various multi-slide variations involving mocked up dialogue boxes with warnings about IT needing to reboot the machine. We even mocked up BSOD (without the ‘loop until Esc’) if we knew they had a deadline and a big piece of work, just to see the reaction when they first saw the screen.”
“Aah, the frivolities of youth and the fragility of WinNT,” Marcus mused.
Have you pranked colleagues? Are you contrite? Go on, click here to admit your deeds to Who, Me? ®