April Fool’s Batch File

February 3, 2010 | Filed Under Batch   107 views



It is early February, which means time to start planning for April Fool’s Day. Here is one I’ve had up my sleeve for some time. A simple batch file that gives the appearance of formatting the Windows hard drive. Rough enough to make even a seasoned administrator do a double take.

Here is the breakdown of what it does.

  1. Show a pleasant, matter of fact message: Windows will now format your hard drive
  2. Wait for three seconds
  3. Enlarge the DOS window
  4. Display the contents of the entire drive.

It simply lists the name of every file on the entire hard drive, but it happens so fast and moves so quickly that it is sure to get a couple of knee jerks here and there.

If you want to be really devious, place this on someone’s hard drive, then create a shortcut to the batch file and change the default icon to something that isn’t as obvious as the batch icon. To be reeeeally devious, rename the shortcut to something like “Internet Explorer”. :-o

Here is the batch file in plain text. To use this, copy the text below and save it to your computer as “format.bat”.

@echo off
REM Fake Format - A perfect April Fool's Day gift
REM Rename to your liking (something like "Free.bat" is suitably devious)
REM Then make sure you are there to watch their response
REM http://brockangelo.com/2010/02/03/april-fools-batch-file/

@echo off
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo            Windows will now format your hard drive
echo.
echo.
echo.
echo.
ping -n 3 127.0.0.1 > nul
cd c:\
mode con: cols=140 lines=60
dir /w /s

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