revisiting the desktop


if you right-click on your desktop background and select "properties" you can access your wallpaper, screen saver, and a few other settings. changing the monitor's resolution isn't all that funny, but having a fake "blue screen of death" error message screen saver is. this error screen is popular with windows. to create the image we'll use the program called paint.

go to:

start > all programs > accessories > paint

you'll need to know your monitor resolution, which you can check by right-clicking on your desktop, choosing properties, and selecting the "settings" tab. the two most common resolutions are 800x600 or 1024x768 pixels. once you know how big your screen is, select the "image" option at the top of your paint program and click attributes. change the canvas size to match your monitor's resolution. now select the color blue at the bottom, and then click on the paint bucket tool to fill the canvas with that color.

when you click on the "a" tool (or text tool) it will make two additional options visible below it; make sure the bottom one is selected.

then in the center of the canvas, we're going to create a box to type in. with the text tool still selected, hold your mouse, click down on the canvas, and drag it to create a big enough area to type in. if you mess up, just click the "a" again to retry. once you're happy with your box, choose the color gray from the bottom and type the following:

A fatal exception 0e has occurred at 0028:c00068f8 in vxd vmm(01) + 000059f8. The current application will be terminated.

* Press any key to terminate the application.

* Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart your computer. You will lose any unsaved information in all applications.

Press any key to continue.

once you've got it, select "file > save as" in the menu. at the top of the new window where it says "save in," change the drop down to display "local disk c:" and then create a new folder named "temp" and double-click it to navigate into it. then at the bottom where it says "save as type," change it to say "jpeg" if the option is available; otherwise just leave it as bmp. name the file "bluescreen" and when you're all done click the save button.

now that you have your image, we need to set up the screen saver, so right-click on your desktop and select "properties" followed by the screen saver tab. in the drop box, choose "my pictures slideshow" and then click the "settings" button. these settings options should be pretty straightforward; just use the "browse" button to find the temp folder you just created, tweak whatever else you want to, and you're done. this screen saver is supposed to display a slideshow of different pictures, but since we only have one picture in our folder it will continuously display that one (it will also ignore any non-image files). go ahead and preview the screen saver if you want to; anyone else who sees it will think something bad just happened.

aside from the background, you can right-click on just about anything on the desktop (start menu button, taskbar, shortcut icons) to access different properties/settings options. with the exception of the recycle bin, using the "shortcut" tab within the properties of any other icon, you can change that icon's picture and target path (what file that shortcut opens), along with miscellaneous other options. in other words, you can make a shortcut icon look like one thing while it triggers a completely different thing; renaming it helps. imagine someone trying to open a word file they've been working on, only to see a picture of a giant butt. we'll be doing this later (not the butt picture, but making an icon appear to be something it's not). feel free to experiment with icons and other desktop properties if you want to.

summing things up, you can go into ms (microsoft) word…

go to:

start > all programs > microsoft word

add an entry to the auto-correct feature (tools > autocorrect). you can configure it to replace a word with any other word or phrase that you want. for example, change all occurrences of "yes" with "no" my gawd that's a killer.

if you have your cd drive configured to auto-run (start > my computer > right-click the cd drive > choose properties > click the auto-play tab), you could leave some raunchy music in the computer at full volume. then just disable any startup sounds (we'll cover sounds in the next chapter) so nobody turns down the volume before it starts playing, and shut it down. the music should blast the next time someone starts up the computer.




Tapeworm - 1337 Hax or Handbook
Tapeworm - 1337 Hax or Handbook
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 74

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