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Warning:

This article is more than 45 days old. Given the speed at which the technology world moves, this post is probably somewhat out of date. Please keep this in mind when reading the post. If this is a tutorial, please check whether you are using the same versions mentioned in the article.

How to have fun... at the expense of your coworkers

Check out the Image File Execution Options hive. Junfeng writes a bit more about how normal people might use this - I'm going to tell you how to have fun with it.

Connect to a coworker's machine and add a few keys.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\notepad.exe]
"Debugger"="calc.exe"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\iexplore.exe]
"Debugger"="word.exe"

Next time they try to open up notepad, they will be presented with the calculator. Want to browse the web? Write some documents instead.

Eventually, they may figure out how this works and try to fix it themselves. You can make this a bit harder for them by changing regedit as well.

[KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\regedit.exe]
"Debugger"="cmd.exe"

Another personal favorite is locking their machine...

C:\WINNT\system32\rundll32.exe user32.dll LockWorkStation

If they're a particularly bad programmer, simply put the above command in a .cmd file and set it to run every time they run VS.NET.

[KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\devenv.exe]
"Debugger"="c:\lock.cmd"

Yes, we're trying to tell you something.

Only published comments... Jul 12 2004, 09:35 AM by Tim

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TrackBack said:

July 12, 2004 9:38 AM
 

Jim Bolla said:

yikes. i'm surprised this hasn't been abused by adware/virii. although there could be practical applications as well. like if you have a notepad.exe replacement you prefer.
July 12, 2004 10:20 AM
   

TrackBack said:

August 14, 2004 4:32 PM