Easter eggs in Microsoft products

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Some of Microsoft's early products included hidden Easter eggs. Microsoft formally stopped including Easter eggs in its programs as part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative in 2002.[1]

Contents

[edit] Microsoft Bear

Drawing of the Bear was the icon for some Windows system files

The Microsoft Bear is one famous mascot of the Windows 3.1 (and later Windows 95) team. It was the teddy bear that one of the senior developers on the team used to carry around. He makes several cameo appearances in Windows:

  • A drawing of him was used as the icon for the SETDEBUG.EXE and JDBGMGR.EXE system files. The odd icon gave credibility to the jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax, claiming that the files were part of a virus.[2] See SULFNBK.EXE for a similar hoax.
  • Several internal system functions, although having meaningful internal names, are exported from USER.EXE as BEARNNN (where NNN is the ordinal number of the function) in his honor (and to discourage their use from uncautious third party software developers).
  • He stars
    Microsoft Bear appearance in an easter egg
    in two distinct easter eggs in Windows 3.1. The first one[3] was the reference to a fictitious file named BEAR.EXE, and in the other one[4] the Bear, along with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Brad Silverberg, presents the email aliases of the Windows 3.1 developers. bradsi, being in charge of Windows production, is listed first (see picture); the three other presenters, billg, steveb, and t-bear, appear together in "Special Thanks", the last section of the list.


[edit] Microsoft Bunny

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During the development of Microsoft Windows 95 the shell developers had several stuffed animals as mascots. One was Bear, who was a hold-over from Windows 3.1. There were two others, bunnies, as well: the smaller one called "16-bit Bunny" and the larger one called "32-bit Bunny". The naming is connected to the fact that Windows 95 was the transitional OS.

In the case of the 32-bit Bunny, knowledge of it was actually somewhat useful to end-users.[citation needed] These features needed to be turned on while Windows 95 was tested and the secret of turning them on was not removed. Some of the desktop features, including full window drag and anti-aliased fonts, could be turned on by placing the line ILOVEBUNNY32=1 under the windows section in win.ini.[citation needed]

Just like the Bear, the Bunny has an exported function named after him. This time, it's BUNNY_351 in krnl386.exe.

[edit] Microsoft Office

[edit] Word for Windows 2

  • In Word for Windows 2, there is a simple animation involving a WordPerfect 'Monster', a fireworks display and credits roll in the About box. Although simple animation, it was taxing for hardware of the day, and no timing loops were included in the code. As a result, the firework display is too quick to see properly on a 486 or higher machine.

[edit] Office 6.0/95

The tip of the day sometimes would display the following fun and inspirational tips. They could also be viewed in the help file.

  • If you do your best, whatever happens will be for the best.
  • Things that go away by themselves can come back by themselves.
  • Plaid shirts and striped pants rarely make a positive fashion statement.
  • You should never dive into murky waters.
  • It's never too late to learn to play the piano.
  • You can hurt yourself if you run with scissors.
  • You should never look directly at the sun.
  • This is the last tip.

Microsoft Excel contained a hidden Doom-like mini-game called "The Hall of Tortured Souls".[5]

[edit] Office 97

The Word 97 Pinball.

[edit] Office 2000

Following in the tradition of hiding a small game in Microsoft Office programs, using Microsoft Excel 2000 and the Microsoft Office Web Components, a small 3-D game called "Dev Hunter" (inspired by Spy Hunter) is accessible.[10] DirectX must be installed for this to work, and the egg is incompatible with certain service pack upgrades.

[edit] Roadway comments

Note: These sentences are all capitalized in the game.

  • WE ARE SPECIAL TOO
  • YOU WILL RESPECT THE RECTANGLES
  • DONT SKIMP ON THE DATA
  • WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE DO AGAIN
  • SO YOUR NAME IS MISSPELLED WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT
  • CIRCLES ARE GOOD TOO BUT THEYRE NOT RECTANGLES
  • PIVOT PIVOT PIVOT CANT GET ENOUGH
  • MALICIOUS PIXIES
  • A CHART SAYS SO MUCH EVEN THOUGH IT DOESNT REALLY SAY ANYTHING BECAUSE IT CANT TALK
  • THANKS FOR SHARING
  • LAST BUT NOT

[edit] Office 2004 Mac

Apparently Microsoft decided to include more Easter eggs after 2000 in the Mac version of Office 2004. The game Asteroids is included in the Microsoft Office Notifications application.[11]

[edit] Windows

Windows 98 credits easter egg

An Easter egg is found on all[citation needed] Microsoft Windows Operating Systems prior to XP. In the 3D Text screen saver, entering the text "volcano" will display the names of all the volcanoes in the United States.

Windows 3.1 has a developer credits page, as described above.

Windows 95 has an animated presentation of the Win95 developers, complete with music.

Windows 98 has a credits screen easter egg.[12]

[edit] Windows Me

Windows Me had a Teapot pipe screensaver. To access it, do the following.

  1. Right click on desktop.
  2. Click properties.
  3. Click screensavers tab.
  4. Choose 3D Pipes.
  5. Click Settings.
  6. Choose multiple pipes.
  7. Choose traditional mixed with joints.
  8. Resolution to max.
  9. Solid texture.
  10. Click OK.
  11. The pipes will have teapots.

File:EasterEgg Microsoft Screensaver.jpg

File:EasterEgg Microsoft Screensaver.jpg
Windows XP screensaver easter egg

[edit] Windows XP

Windows XP had a candy cane pipe screensaver. To access it, do the following.

  1. In screensaver menu select 3D Pipes.
  2. Go to its settings.
  3. In the surface style category bubble in texture by clicking on it.
  4. Click choose texture.
  5. When choose texture opens click cancel.
  6. Click OK in the settings.
  7. Then the pipes will be candy cane.

In Windows XP Pinball game:

  1. Open Pinball program
  2. Type "hidden test" (lower case, including space)
  3. Left click the ball with cursor and hold the button down.
  4. Now you can move the ball with your mouse.

[edit] Windows Vista

  • Three images are embedded in the surface of Windows Vista's installation DVD. According to Computing World, one of the images is the faces of the members of Microsoft's antipiracy team who worked on the hologram.[13] Although somewhat fun, this is more of an example of a security feature.

[edit] Internet Explorer

The Easter egg hidden in Microsoft Internet Explorer can only be displayed in Internet Explorer 4.0; however, the relevant HTML code has been present in all the subsequent versions as well, up to and including Internet Explorer 7, even though Microsoft "officially" claimed there are no Easter eggs in IE 7. By typing in "about:mozilla" in the URL bar Internet Explorer will display nothing but a solid blue screen(a reference to the blue screen of death.)[14]

[edit] Hover!

Main article: Hover!

Hover! is a video game that came bundled with the CD version of Windows 95. It was a showcase for the advanced multimedia capabilities available on personal computers at the time. It is still available from Microsoft[15] and can be run on all of Microsoft's operating systems released since Windows 95 including Windows 7.

One level (shown as "small.maz" in the mazes directory of the game) is used as the introduction level shown when the game finishes starting up. If the player presses and holds "Ctrl+Shift+IBMAB" ("Bambi" backwards, "Bambi" was the code name for the project), one can unlock the level and drive around in it. There are pictures of everyone involved with the Hover! project along the maze walls.

[edit] Features often misunderstood to be Easter eggs

The following are not Easter eggs, but rather features unexpected to many users of Microsoft products.

See also: Undocumented feature

[edit] Microsoft Word

Every version of Microsoft Word from 97 to 2003 (Windows) or 2004 to 2008 (Word:Mac) contains a function to create filler text: typing =rand() in a Word document and hitting Enter results in 3 paragraphs of 5 repetitions of the pangram "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog". Typing =rand(X,Y) (with numbers for X and Y) results in X paragraphs of Y repetitions of the sentence. For example, =rand(10,10) will produce ten paragraphs, each with ten repetitions. Microsoft has officially described this as a feature and not an Easter egg.[16] In Microsoft Word 2007, the repeated sentence is replaced with a longer text:

“ On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look.

You can easily change the formatting of selected text in the document text by choosing a look for the selected text from the Quick Styles gallery on the Home tab. You can also format text directly by using the other controls on the Home tab. Most controls offer a choice of using the look from the current theme or using a format that you specify directly. To change the overall look of your document, choose new Theme elements on the Page Layout tab. To change the looks available in the Quick Style gallery, use the Change Current Quick Style Set command. Both the Themes gallery and the Quick Styles gallery provide reset commands so that you can always restore the look of your document to the original contained in your current template.

 ”

When =rand(1,1) is written, only a simple sentence is shown: in English, it is "On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document."

Furthermore, the addition of numbers in the form =rand(X,Y) display different tips according to the (x,y) combination. Example for this =rand(10,1800) will produce 370,000 words on 509 pages (using the default formatting).

[edit] Microsoft Excel

Since version 5, Excel has possessed a "datedif" function, which calculates the difference in whole days, months or years between two dates. Although this function is still present in Excel 2007, it was only documented in Excel 2000.[17]

[edit] Microsoft Windows

It is not possible to create a folder called "con" or rename an existing folder to that name. This has been subject to a hoax that claims Microsoft is unable to explain why;[18] however, this is a known feature as "con" is reserved DOS device name along with "prn", "aux", "nul", etc.

  • CON is for console (keyboard and screen)
  • PRN is for print device (first connected parallel port)
  • AUX is for auxiliary device (first connected serial port)
  • COM1 - COM4 are for the PC's serial ports
  • LPT1 - LPT3 are for the PC's parallel ports
  • NUL is the null device (anything written to this device vanishes, reading from it yields an EOF)

One workaround for this is to create the directory using the mkdir command. This does not work with Windows XP, however the following command will work: md .\con\. This will make the directory, however you can only delete it with the Command Prompt. Typing con\con into the Run bar in Windows 9x will cause the system to crash and encounter a stop screen.

Another form of 'easter egg' is the DeskBar feature of Windows 98 Second Edition. The feature was probably hidden because there was not enough time to finish it on time for the release. Right click on the taskbar, and while holding Ctrl, click Properties. A new tab will be available, called DeskBar Options. On that tab there is an empty list and three buttons, all 'grayed out'.[19]

Also, in Windows XP, a .wma file named "title" can be found in the directory %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\oobe\images\. Although many believe it to be an easter egg, it is in fact the background music played during the initial configuration wizard used to perform tasks such as setting up user accounts the first time that a new installation of Windows XP is used.

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Larry Osterman (October 21, 2005). "Why no Easter Eggs?". Larry Osterman's WebLog. MSDN Blogs. http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483608.aspx. Retrieved 2007-02-18. 
  2. ^ "Sophos's page about the SETDEBUG.EXE/JDBGMGR.EXE hoaxes". http://www.sophos.com/security/hoaxes/jdbgmgr.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  3. ^ "How to find the Microsoft Bear in Windows 3.1". http://www.eeggs.com/items/19127.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  4. ^ "How to find the developer credits in Windows 3.1". http://www.eeggs.com/items/469.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  5. ^ "Excel 95 Hall of Tortured Souls". http://eeggs.com/items/719.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  6. ^ "Excel 97 Flight to Credits". http://eeggs.com/items/718.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  7. ^ "Excel 97 Flight Simulator". http://eeggs.com/items/29841.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  8. ^ "Pinball in Word 97". http://eeggs.com/items/763.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  9. ^ "Magic 8 Ball in Access 97". http://www.eeggs.com/items/708.html. Retrieved July 7, 2006. 
  10. ^ "Excel Oddities: Easter Eggs". http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/eastereg.htm. Retrieved August 10, 2006. 
  11. ^ http://macfixer.blogspot.com/2006/12/microsoft-office-2004-easter-egg.html
  12. ^ "Windows 95/98 - Tips & Tricks: Easter Eggs". http://www.activewin.com/tips/eeggs/win_98.shtml. Retrieved August 10, 2006. 
  13. ^ Computing World
  14. ^ Internet Explorer (February 9, 2006)
  15. ^ ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/deskapps/games/public/AAS/Hover.exe
  16. ^ WD98: How to Insert Sample Text into a Document
  17. ^ DATEDIF Function
  18. ^ http://www.hoax-slayer.com/con-folder-name.shtml
  19. ^ "Reveal hidden deskbar". http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190252. Retrieved 14 December 2008. 

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