Easter eggs in Microsoft products
Encyclopedia
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.
The Microsoft Bear is a 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 appearance
s in Windows:
In the case of the 32-bit Bunny, knowledge of it was actually somewhat useful to end-users. 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.
Just like the Bear, the Bunny has an exported function named after him. This time, it's BUNNY_351 in krnl386.exe.
Also, the Bunny is the icon for rumor.exe (Microsoft Party Line) in some Windows Chicago betas.
Microsoft Excel
contained a hidden Doom-like mini-game called "The Hall of Tortured Souls".
and the Microsoft Office Web Components, a small 3-D game called "Dev Hunter" (inspired by Spy Hunter
) is accessible. DirectX must be installed for this to work, and the egg is incompatible with certain service pack upgrades.
Controls:
An Easter egg that displays the names of all the volcanoes in the United States is found on all Microsoft Windows Operating Systems prior to XP in the "3Dtext" screensaver.
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.
The pipe screensaver in Windows 95 through to ME inclusive very occasionally has the Utah Teapot
appear instead of a standard joint. It only appears if the pipes are "multiple", pipe-style "standard", joint-type "multiple" and texture "solid" under the screensaver's settings.
Windows XP contains three MIDI files in the WINDOWS Media directory: Town, Flourish and Onestop. These audio files are also present in Windows Vista and 7.
In the Windows 2000 and XP Pinball
games, typing "hidden test" when the game is active starts test mode. In this mode, the user can drag the ball with the mouse cursor, and can press H to instantly get a high score, R to increase rank, M to display system memory, and Y to show frame rate. Typing "1max" at the start of a new ball awards an extra ball. Similarly, the user can type "gmax" to activate the gravity well, "rmax" to go up a rank, and "bmax" for unlimited balls (this last one results in an endless game, thereby precluding activation of the other cheats until the game is restarted).
In Windows 2000 and Windows XP (through SP2), the game Minesweeper
contains multiple easter eggs. If you start the game, type "xyzzy
", and then press shift and enter simultaneously, the top left-most pixel of the monitor (not the window) will be white or black when the mouse is hovered above a square, indicating that the square is either safe or mined, respectively. (The first click anywhere in Minesweeper is never a mine. A click on a 'black' square, as first click, moves that mine away). Also, if the high scores of all three game sizes are credited to the name "WRAPFIELD", the number in each cell that counts the adjacent mines will treat the board as wrapping around the edges; i.e., cells along an edge will be counted as adjacent to the opposite edge. These easter eggs were removed in Windows XP Service Pack 3.
can only be displayed in Internet Explorer 4
; 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 address bar Internet Explorer will display nothing but a solid blue screen (a reference to the blue screen of death
). However, this does not work as of 2010-03-16 on XP SP3 with fully updated IE7.
Acid1
is included as an offline Easter egg, accessible by typing 'about:
tasman
', in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS
with the text replaced by the names of the developers.
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 computer
s at the time. It is still available from Microsoft and can be run on all of Microsoft's operating systems released since Windows 95 including Windows 7.
Pictures of everyone involved with the Hover! project are displayed along the maze walls upon completion of initialization of an introductory level.
from 97 to 2010 (Windows) or 2004 to 2011 (Word:Mac) contains a function to create filler text
: typing
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
". Typing
In Microsoft Word 2007, the repeated sentence is replaced with a longer text:
When
In Word 2007, the 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' text is available by typing the command
Additionally, typing =lorem
gives the following text:
All of these features will be disabled when "Replace text as you type" is turned off.
The DeskBar is a hidden feature of Windows 98 Second Edition, probably because there was not enough time to finish it before the release.
In Windows XP, a .wma file named title (an environmental mix by Brian Eno) is found under the system directory. This is 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.
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's early products included hidden Easter eggs
Easter egg (media)
Image:Carl Oswald Rostosky - Zwei Kaninchen und ein Igel 1861.jpg|250px|thumb|right|Example of Easter egg hidden within imagerect 467 383 539 434 desc none...
. Microsoft formally stopped including Easter eggs in its programs as part of its Trustworthy Computing
Trustworthy Computing
The term Trustworthy Computing has been applied to computing systems that are inherently secure, available, and reliable. The Committee on Information Systems Trustworthiness’ publication, Trust in Cyberspace, defines such a system as one which...
Initiative in 2002.
Microsoft Bear
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
of the Windows 3.1
Windows 3.1x
Windows 3.1x is a series of 16-bit operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers. The series began with Windows 3.1, which was first sold during March 1992 as a successor to Windows 3.0...
(and later Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
) team. It was the teddy bear
Teddy bear
The teddy bear is a stuffed toy bear. They are usually stuffed with soft, white cotton and have smooth and soft fur. It is an enduring form of a stuffed animal in many countries, often serving the purpose of entertaining children. In recent times, some teddy bears have become collector's items...
that one of the senior developers on the team used to carry around. He makes several cameo appearance
Cameo appearance
A cameo role or cameo appearance is a brief appearance of a known person in a work of the performing arts, such as plays, films, video games and television...
s in Windows:
- A drawing of him was used as the iconIcon (computing)A computer icon is a pictogram displayed on a computer screen and used to navigate a computer system or mobile device. The icon itself is a small picture or symbol serving as a quick, intuitive representation of a software tool, function or a data file accessible on the system. It functions as an...
for the SETDEBUG.EXE and JDBGMGR.EXE system files. The odd icon gave credibility to the jdbgmgr.exe virus hoaxJdbgmgr.exe virus hoaxThe jdbgmgr.exe virus hoax involved an e-mail spam in 2002 that advised computer users to delete a file named jdbgmgr.exe because it was a computer virus...
, claiming that the files were part of a virusComputer virusA computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...
. See SULFNBK.EXESULFNBK.EXESULFNBK.EXE is an internal component of the Microsoft Windows operating system for restoring long file names....
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 useObfuscated codeObfuscated code is source or machine code that has been made difficult to understand for humans. Programmers may deliberately obfuscate code to conceal its purpose or its logic to prevent tampering, deter reverse engineering, or as a puzzle or recreational challenge for someone reading the source...
by incautious third party software developers). - He stars in two distinct easter eggs in Windows 3.1. The first one was the reference to a fictitious file named BEAR.EXE, and in the other one the Bear, along with Bill GatesBill GatesWilliam Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
, Steve BallmerSteve BallmerSteven Anthony "Steve" Ballmer is an American business magnate. He is the chief executive officer of Microsoft, having held that post since January 2000. , his personal wealth is estimated at US$13.9 billion, ranking number 19 on the Forbes 400.-Early life:Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan to...
and Brad SilverbergBrad SilverbergBrad Silverberg is most noted for his work at Microsoft in 1990–1999 as Senior VP and product manager for MS-DOS, Windows, Internet Explorer, and Office...
, 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.
Microsoft Bunny
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. 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.
Just like the Bear, the Bunny has an exported function named after him. This time, it's BUNNY_351 in krnl386.exe.
Also, the Bunny is the icon for rumor.exe (Microsoft Party Line) in some Windows Chicago betas.
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. The user's name (entered in Tools Options) was appended to the end of the "Thanks" section of the credits.Office 4.3/95
The tip of the day would sometimes 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
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
contained a hidden Doom-like mini-game called "The Hall of Tortured Souls".
Office 97
- Microsoft ExcelMicrosoft ExcelMicrosoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
contained a hidden flight simulatorFlight simulatorA flight simulator is a device that artificially re-creates aircraft flight and various aspects of the flight environment. This includes the equations that govern how aircraft fly, how they react to applications of their controls and other aircraft systems, and how they react to the external...
. - Microsoft WordMicrosoft WordMicrosoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
contained a hidden pinballPinballPinball is a type of arcade game, usually coin-operated, where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass-covered case called a pinball machine. The primary objective of the game is to score as many points as possible...
game.
- Microsoft AccessMicrosoft AccessMicrosoft Office Access, previously known as Microsoft Access, is a relational database management system from Microsoft that combines the relational Microsoft Jet Database Engine with a graphical user interface and software-development tools. It is a member of the Microsoft Office suite of...
contained a hidden simulation of the Magic 8 Ball toy.
Office 2000
Following in the tradition of hiding a small game in Microsoft Office programs, using Microsoft Excel 2000Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
and the Microsoft Office Web Components, a small 3-D game called "Dev Hunter" (inspired by Spy Hunter
Spy Hunter
Spy Hunter is a 1983 arcade game developed and released by Bally Midway. It has also been ported to various home computers and video game systems....
) is accessible. DirectX must be installed for this to work, and the egg is incompatible with certain service pack upgrades.
Roadway comments
Please Take 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 LEAST BUT ALSO NOT COMPRESSED HAM
Excel 2000
A car-driving game can be found in Ms Excel 2000 by following these steps:- Open Excel 2000.
- Go to File, Save as Web Page.
- Then click Publish.
- Check the checkbox that says "Add Interactivity With".
- Click Publish.
- Close Excel.
- Open IE.
- Click File, Open, Browse.
- Go to where you saved it and click open.
- Now you should be looking at a spreadsheet.
- Go to all the way to row 2000.
- Click column A and drag all the way to column ZZ.
- Hit Tab and it should take you back to A.
- Hold Tab all the way to column WC. (Press shift Tab in case you move back).
- When you get there make sure WC is a white box and all the others are blue or green..
- Hold Ctrl+alt+shift and left click on the "four puzzle pieces" logo (The MS Excel Logo) on the upper left hand corner.
Controls:
- Arrow keys: to steer and accelerate
- Space bar: To fire at other cars
- O: To drop oil slicks
- H: To turn on/off your headlights (toggle switch).
Office 2004 Mac
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 Secrets Notifications application.Windows
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.
The pipe screensaver in Windows 95 through to ME inclusive very occasionally has the Utah Teapot
Utah teapot
The Utah teapot or Newell teapot is a 3D computer model which has become a standard reference object in the computer graphics community. It is a mathematical model of an ordinary teapot of fairly simple shape, which appears solid, cylindrical and partially convex...
appear instead of a standard joint. It only appears if the pipes are "multiple", pipe-style "standard", joint-type "multiple" and texture "solid" under the screensaver's settings.
Windows 2000/XP
Windows 2000 and XP have an undocumented texture in the pipes (sspipes.scr) screensaver makes the pipes red and white similar to candy canes.Windows XP contains three MIDI files in the WINDOWS Media directory: Town, Flourish and Onestop. These audio files are also present in Windows Vista and 7.
In the Windows 2000 and XP Pinball
Full Tilt! Pinball
Full Tilt! Pinball is a pinball video game developed by Cinematronics and published by Maxis in 1995. It featured pre-rendered 3D graphics and three "tables", which were essentially different games. The tables were called Space Cadet, Skulduggery, and Dragon's Keep...
games, typing "hidden test" when the game is active starts test mode. In this mode, the user can drag the ball with the mouse cursor, and can press H to instantly get a high score, R to increase rank, M to display system memory, and Y to show frame rate. Typing "1max" at the start of a new ball awards an extra ball. Similarly, the user can type "gmax" to activate the gravity well, "rmax" to go up a rank, and "bmax" for unlimited balls (this last one results in an endless game, thereby precluding activation of the other cheats until the game is restarted).
In Windows 2000 and Windows XP (through SP2), the game Minesweeper
Minesweeper (Windows)
Windows Minesweeper is a variant of the computer game Minesweeper, created by Curt Johnson, originally for OS/2, and ported to Microsoft Windows by Robert Donner, both Microsoft employees at the time...
contains multiple easter eggs. If you start the game, type "xyzzy
Xyzzy
Xyzzy is a magic word from the Colossal Cave Adventure computer game.In computing, the word is sometimes used as a metasyntactic variable or as a video game cheat code, the canonical "magic word"...
", and then press shift and enter simultaneously, the top left-most pixel of the monitor (not the window) will be white or black when the mouse is hovered above a square, indicating that the square is either safe or mined, respectively. (The first click anywhere in Minesweeper is never a mine. A click on a 'black' square, as first click, moves that mine away). Also, if the high scores of all three game sizes are credited to the name "WRAPFIELD", the number in each cell that counts the adjacent mines will treat the board as wrapping around the edges; i.e., cells along an edge will be counted as adjacent to the opposite edge. These easter eggs were removed in Windows XP Service Pack 3.
Windows Vista
Three images are embedded in the surface of Windows Vista's installation DVD. One of the images is the faces of the members of Microsoft's antipiracy team who worked on the hologram.Internet Explorer
The Easter egg hidden in Microsoft Internet ExplorerInternet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
can only be displayed in Internet Explorer 4
Internet Explorer 4
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 is a graphical web browser released in September 1997 by Microsoft, primarily for Microsoft Windows, but also with versions available for Apple Mac OS, Solaris, and HP-UX and marketed as "The Web the Way You Want It".It was one of the main participants of the first...
; however, the relevant HTML code has been present in all the subsequent versions as well, up to and including Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
, even though Microsoft "officially" claimed there are no Easter eggs in IE 7. By typing in "about:mozilla" in the address bar Internet Explorer will display nothing but a solid blue screen (a reference to the blue screen of death
Blue Screen of Death
To forse a BSOD Open regedit.exe,Then search: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\i8042prt\ParametersThen make a new DWORD called "CrashOnCtrlScroll" And set the value to 1....
). However, this does not work as of 2010-03-16 on XP SP3 with fully updated IE7.
Acid1
Acid1
Acid1, originally called the Box Acid Test, is a test page for web browsers. It was developed in October 1998 and was important in establishing baseline interoperability between early web browsers, especially for the Cascading Style Sheets 1.0 specification...
is included as an offline Easter egg, accessible by typing 'about:
About: URI scheme
about is an internal URI scheme in various web browsers to display certain built-in functions...
tasman
Tasman (layout engine)
Tasman was a layout engine developed by Microsoft for inclusion in the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5. Tasman was an attempt to improve support for web standards, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. At the time of its release, Tasman was seen as the layout engine with the best...
', in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac OS
Internet Explorer for Mac
Internet Explorer for Mac was a proprietary web browser developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh platform. Initial versions were developed from the same code base as Internet Explorer for Windows...
with the text replaced by the names of the developers.
Hover!
Hover!Hover!
Hover! is a video game that was included on CD-ROM versions of the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system. It was a showcase for the advanced multimedia capabilities available on personal computers at the time. It is still available from Microsoft and will run on all of Microsoft's 95-compatible...
is a video game that came bundled with the CD version of Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
. It was a showcase for the advanced multimedia
Multimedia
Multimedia is media and content that uses a combination of different content forms. The term can be used as a noun or as an adjective describing a medium as having multiple content forms. The term is used in contrast to media which use only rudimentary computer display such as text-only, or...
capabilities available on personal computer
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s at the time. It is still available from Microsoft and can be run on all of Microsoft's operating systems released since Windows 95 including Windows 7.
Pictures of everyone involved with the Hover! project are displayed along the maze walls upon completion of initialization of an introductory level.
Features often misunderstood to be Easter eggs
The following are not Easter eggs, but rather features unexpected by many users of Microsoft products.Microsoft Word
Every version of Microsoft WordMicrosoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
from 97 to 2010 (Windows) or 2004 to 2011 (Word:Mac) contains a function to create filler text
Filler text
Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter...
: typing
=rand in a Word document and hitting Enter results in 3 paragraphs of 5 repetitions of the pangramPangram
A pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" is an English-language pangram, that is, a phrase that contains all of the letters of the alphabet. It has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet...
". 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.In Microsoft Word 2007, the repeated sentence is replaced with a longer text:
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."In Word 2007, the 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog' text is available by typing the command
=rand.old and pressing enter.Additionally, typing =lorem
Lorem ipsum
In publishing and graphic design, lorem ipsum[p] is placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements of a document or visual presentation, such as font, typography, and layout...
gives the following text:
All of these features will be disabled when "Replace text as you type" is turned off.
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 and 2010, it was only documented in Excel 2000.Microsoft Windows
In Microsoft Windows, it is not possible to create or rename a folder called con (short for "console") because it is a reserved DOS device name along with prn, aux, and nul. This has been subject to a hoax that claims Microsoft is unable to explain why.The DeskBar is a hidden feature of Windows 98 Second Edition, probably because there was not enough time to finish it before the release.
In Windows XP, a .wma file named title (an environmental mix by Brian Eno) is found under the system directory. This is 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.