We’ve all seen those lists of keyboard shortcuts and other not-surprising tips about Windows and its shell programs, but this is a list of even more obscure Windows features and easter-eggs that even the savviest users don’t know about.

Some of these are easter eggs within the Windows operating system or included programs, and others are generally undocumented/forgotten features that nobody really uses due to lack of general knowledge. Either way, everyone is sure to get something out of this, and as you read further down the countdown the secrets get even more technical and obscure (in other words, if you see something listed here you’ve known about, keep reading – chances are something further down the list will surprise you!)

10. Alt-escape
We thought we’d start with something cross-platform and fairly easy to initiate, so the first (or last) thing on the list is the long-forgotten companion keyboard shortcut of alt-tab: alt-escape. Most power users know about alt-tab’s ability to switch windows with even a nice icon display in most versions of Windows, but alt-escape does the same, only starting with the window at the bottom of the window stack.

As per alt-shift-tab, alt-shift-escape reverses the order in which windows are switched. Could be handy in some situations where alt-tab or taskbar-hunting is too slow to find an open window.

9. Pinball’s “hidden test”
As most know, pinball was a program included in later versions of Windows NT, namely Windows 2000 and Windows XP as per a software deal between Microsoft and the authors of the pinball game in question. But many don’t know about the hidden ability to control the pinball via the mouse the game includes, accessible by typing “hidden test” (including the actual space) after starting a game.

Upon typing the phrase, you can control the pinball directly via the mouse and push your high score waaaay over that of your friends, without even editing any data files!

8. Widget-like CPU graph
This has been a feature in task manager since at least Windows NT 4.0: fire up task manager, click the “Performance” tab, then double-click anywhere within the window and voila! instant chromeless CPU graph you can drag around from anywhere within the window.

This is a fine example of how Microsoft programs have a tendency to include the ability to remove the window chrome from their programs, as seen also in the Windows NT clock (last included in NT 4.0) via double-clicking as well.

7. A Few Shortcuts
The subject of Task Manager prompts a list of keyboard shortcuts you may or may not already know about, but we’d like to list anyway: (super refers to the “Windows logo” key): super+r brings up the run box, control+shift+escape fires up task manager from anywhere, super+e brings up explorer.exe (“My Computer”), super+l locks the computer provided you have a password, and super+d minimizes all open windows to reveal the desktop (in addition to bringing them back again).

Also, for screenshots, the printscreen key on the keyboard will dump the complete contents of the visible screen into the clipboard (you paste it into an app, such as mspaint) while alt+printscreen only selects the active window.

We’d also like to note the forgotten ability to assign any program to any unused keystroke via the right-clickable properties of any icon and looking under the “shortcut” tab for the keyboard shortcut text box.

6. Bluescreen On-Demand
This feature of the Windows i8042 keyboard controller driver entails in modifying the system registry, so please be careful when setting this up as we’ll have told you just enough to be dangerous (system administrators are no stranger to the registry, however

Open up regedit (super-r regedit) and, using the tree in the left pane, browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\CurrentControlSet\\Services\\i8042prt\\Parameters . From here, right click in the right pane and select New>”DWORD (32-bit) Value” and name it “CrashOnCtrlScroll” (without the quotes and set its value to 1 . After a reboot, holding control and pressing Scroll lock twice will bluescreen (crash) the machine.

This is apparently a registry parameter included by Microsoft for their generic i8042 keyboard controller driver, which when activated causes said driver to crash the kernel and thus the machine. I would take a guess at Microsoft’s leaving this in the driver as a means of testing the bluescreen (bugcheck) routine, but other than that it’s just a nice way to crash Windows, without just simply waiting around for it to happen .

5. Internet Explorer Kiosk Mode
This next tip is really only practical if you were running a coffee shop with touchscreen kiosks on an intranet (since you can’t input URLs when doing this), but nonetheless some reader of ours may wish to do just that.

There are two ways to do this: you can either bring up a run box (super-r) and type “iexplore -k” (without the quotes), or modify the shortcut icon’s properties to target “c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe -k” (depending on your system). The result, either way, is a full-screen internet explorer window without any chrome or status bar or anything. Enjoy.

4. Resource Editing
This is easily the most dangerous “secret” on this page, although it isn’t really a secret at all, just a way to modify Windows resources. By resources, we are talking about strings and images included within programs and libraries used by Windows. The tool for editing the resources is called Resource Hacker, and can change almost any text within any program (hopefully script kiddies won’t read this).

Some notable system files to modify the resources of are: C:\windows\explorer.exe (start menu, general desktop dialog boxes), and C:\windows\system32\msgina.dll (login window strings and images). Use this at your own risk, as any errors in recompiling those system files can lead to an unstable(r) system or even an unbootable system.

3. Windows 98 Product Team
This gem requires both a working Windows 98 installation, and a little time and effort to do, but here goes: open up explorer (super-e) and browse to c:\windows\application data\microsoft\welcome . Click weldata, then right click and choose to create a shortcut.

Right click to the properties dialog of the shortcut, and at the end of the “target” text box (past the quotes) type a space and paste “You_are_a_real_rascal” (without the quotes). Now, at the bottom of the shortcut properties where it says “run”, choose “minimized”, then close and double-click the shortcut for a “video” of the Windows 98 team names and assorted Microsoft campus pictures.

The video is really an ActiveX (or JavaScript?) heavy local HTML document, so a working iexplore.exe is required to view it. Viewing the source does not work, since the HTML documents created are deleted just as fast as they were created, leaving no time to view the HTML source.

2. Useful NT Commands
Windows NT does, contrary to popular belief, come with a few very useful commands for detailed system modification. A few of the most useful ones (with documentation accessible via the ‘/?’ option) are: net (particularly “net use”), taskkill (similar to kill in Unix), control (user administration), findstr (similar to grep), gpresult (view group policy results), netsh (a whole shell for network administration), and driverquery (similar to lsmod, but with minimal documentation).

1. Game Cheats
We saved the best for last, and here it is – the mother lode! We already mentioned the pinball cheat, and here are some cheats for other popular games included with windows:

Solitaire/Spider Solitaire: Pressing alt+shift+2 will instantly beat any game, causing the cards to flow and all just as if you’ve played the game all the way through. Fun to show off for your friends with!

FreeCell: control+shift+F10 will prompt you to either “abort, retry, or fail” (an MS-DOS error reference by FreeCell programmer Jim Horne), and clicking abort followed by making another move will instantly win any game for you, even the unsolvable games -1, -2, and 11982 (selectable via the game menu or F3).

Minesweeper: Not an instant-win shortcut, but just as good: This only worked on expert mode for us, but whenever in a game, type “xyzzy” (without the quotes) and press the left shift key (if it doesn’t work, try the right key). After doing this, click on your desktop (without hitting an icon) and click F5 to refresh it.

The very top-left pixel of your screen (hard to see) will now be white, and will turn black whenever your mouse hovers over a button concealing a mine within the minesweeper game. The F5 keystroke is needed to refresh your desktop to reveal the newly-added pixel, and is required on NT-based Windows versions (and probably 98 and 95) due to Active Desktop being added on as a feature.

These game cheats are undoubtedly the coolest secrets in Windows, alongside the “volcano” screensaver text in Windows NT 4.0 (not listed because it only works in NT 4.0, not 2000 or XP).

0. Pranks
Well, we write a lot of software, and although we said there would be 10 secrets listed, we can’t help but to add an extra element (and therefore making it have undefined results . These, in addition to the resource hacking we mentioned earlier, are some of our favorite windows pranks we would like to share with our readers:

The Fake Icons: First, take a full screenshot via the printscreen key on the keyboard. Paste the screenshot into a new mspaint session, and save the file. Then, highlight all of the user’s icons before cutting and pasting them into a new folder located under “My Documents” or somewhere not on the desktop. Set the taskbar to autohide via the properties dialog for it, then unlock it and drag it to the top of the screen so it remains hidden from the user.

Set the screenshot you saved earlier as the desktop background, and voila! all of the user’s “icons” are unclickable and the start menu/taskbar is fake as well. I’ve been doing this to people since Windows 95 was first widespread, and even today it’s a timeless classic for most users.

Windows Pranks: Windows Pranks.com contains the most amusing set of harmless Windows programs designed to be used as pranks you’ve ever seen (besides the ones at RJL). Place any of the files found on the site into “C:\documents and settings\all users\start menu\programs\startup” for them to instantly execute when any user logs in for the time of your life!

Login/Logoff: In the same vein as the Windows Pranks, you can make your own DOS-command based pranks such as the one-liners “shutdown” and “logoff” in Anthony’s .bat to .exe converter, and placing them in the same all users startup folder mentioned above will bring any user to their knees!

Fake cmd.exe: Follow the instructions on the pastebin entry for Anthony’s Fake cmd.exe code for a prank to freak out any system administrator.

Well, that does it for our list of secrets and our own list of favorite Windows pranks, and we hope you as a reader enjoyed them and even learned a little something from them. Just remember: don’t make it too obvious you’re looking at that pixel when showing off your new minesweeper skills, remember to put the fake cmd.exe in dllcache, and don’t get too crazy with the pranks!