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Healthy Tricks for Sick Pranks

Welcome Screen

I do not know about you, but after about five years of XP using, I got a little tired of seeing that Welcome Screen whenever the OS is loading. And removing it would bring me the much
awaited peace I need. I am sure that you have found all sorts of methods of removing it: editing the registry entries by yourself or downloading a program from the Internet that does it automatically. The Web is flooded with tips and tricks on how to change something in your XP to bring it closer to your tastes.

Anyway, I thought you may want to know how to remove that nagging (for me at least) blue Welcome Screen without appealing to nothing else but your Windows XP operating system. There aren't too many users that know that XP itself and Microsoft's website provide you a series of tools designed to customize your OS in order to make it more fun and add a plus of functionality.

Removing the Windows XP Welcome screen is really easy and it will not take you more than a jiffy to do it. The only condition is for you to be the only one that uses the computer, as it involves removing the password screen. After disabling the Welcome screen, the OS will load automatically in the administrator account.

First of all, you will have to go to User Accounts situated in the Control Panel. Open your account and create a password for your account. Do not worry, as you will not have to enter the countersign every time you load XP as the option will be disabled later on.

Next step would be going to Start menu and typing in Run control userpasswords2. Just paste it from here to be sure you got it right. In the user accounts dialog that opened, uncheck the “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer” box. As soon as you click on Apply button, XP will need to make sure that it is indeed an authorized person that meddles around security settings of the machine.

That's about all there is about disabling the Welcome screen. From now on, you will no longer be prompted to type in a password and the screen will just vanish.

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Logo Removal

How would you feel about removing that Microsoft brand at Windows XP startup? What do you get instead? Nothing except for a black screen. Trying this will not result in any harm to your computer as there will be no messing around with Windows' system files. It is just an option that XP provides.

First of all, you should know that the Microsoft logo at startup and the loading bar are displayed during the BIOS loading. They are two separate files that can be modified very easily. If you do not know how to do it, just search the Internet for change XP bootscreen and the browser's page will be flooded with results. For hacking the Windows files, you will need to be armed with a little confidence and patience. The easy part is using BootSkin, a freeware loaded with boot themes ready to be applied.

For getting rid of the Microsoft logo displayed while BIOS is loading, begin with opening System Configuration utility. Go to Start>Run and type msconfig. The window will open in an instance. The box you have to check is /NOGUIBOOT. Roughly translated, it means that there will be no interface displayed during the boot process.

Applying will get you the desired effect during the boot and nothing will be displayed while BIOS loads. Simple as that.

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High Contrasted XP

Let me give yet another tip on Windows XP’s capabilities. Did you know that there is a key combination that will instantly display the High Contrast dialog? The magic keys are SHIFT, left ALT and PRINT SCREEN. Pressed together, they will bring forth the necessary dialog to improve the readability for people with visual impairment. For reversing the operation, it is enough to use the key combination once more and everything will become normal again.

If you click OK on that box, the screen should turn black as this is the default contrast in Windows and everything will be bigger. But do not stop at making it just black. Use the Settings button to get into the intricacies of the option.

Accessibility Options allow you to configure the Sticky Keys for the keyboard, enable the Show Sounds option, choose a different contrast in Display (you have 36 options to choose from). In Mouse tab, you can configure the keyboard to act as a mouse (NumLock arrows).

If you really want to play a prank on your friends, then here's a tip: try the CTRL+ALT+one of the arrow keys. This combination will rotate the screen by 180 degrees. For a newbie, this experience could be pretty scary. However, there is a catch. Not all the Windows XP installed machines will be able to respond correctly to the action. I tried this at home and it worked just fine. Doing the same thing at the office resulted into utter failure. The only thing I can think of about this is that the shortcut is driver dependant.

However, if you have an NVIDIA board, then go to Rotation Settings and operate a 180 degrees action. It is pretty weird and combined with changing the mouse buttons' action, it can result in a pretty dangerous burst of laughter.

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