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.
Microsoft Bear
The Microsoft Bear is a mascot of the Windows 3.1 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.
See SULFNBK.EXE for a similar hoax.
Several internal system functions, although having meaningful internal names, are exported
from USER.EXE as BEARNNN in his honor.
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 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; 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.
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, BUNNY_351 in krnl386.exe.
Also, the Bunny is the icon for rumor.exe in some Windows Chicago betas.
Microsoft QBasic In QBasic, the developers' names can be seen
at start up, printed in colorful text, flying in one letter at a time from every corner.
To see this, perform the following procedure: Start up QBasic by entering 'qbasic' at command
prompt.
Immediately hold down Left Ctrl, Left Alt, Left Shift AND Right Ctrl, Right Alt, Right
Shift TOGETHER.
Wait for a few seconds.
Note: This only works in "QBasic", not "QUICKBasic", and is best seen on an older, slower machine.
Microsoft Office 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 was appended to the end of the "Thanks" section of the credits.
Office 4.397 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 contained a hidden Doom-like mini-game called "The Hall of Tortured Souls".
Office 97 Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight
simulator.
Microsoft Word contained a hidden pinball game.
Microsoft Access contained a hidden simulation of the Magic 8 Ball toy.
This works in Office 97 and 2000.
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" is accessible.
DirectX must be installed for this to work, and the egg is incompatible with certain service
pack upgrades.
Comments appearing in Dev Hunter On the roadway shown in this game, a list
of sentences appears, all capitalized: 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 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 Notifications application.
Office 2013 If one sets the background to "School Supplies",
a sillouette of Clippy's excited face can be seen.
Windows
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 3.0 has a developer credits page which may be accessed by setting the focus to the
desktop then typing "win30" followed by, in quick succession, the F3 key and the Backspace
key.
This causes the developer credits to appear on the desktop in the form of the email names
of the crew.
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 2000/XP
Windows 2000 and XP have an undocumented texture in the pipes screensaver that makes the pipes
red and white similar to candy canes.
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 By typing in "about:mozilla" in the address
bar Internet Explorer will display nothing but a solid blue screen.
However, this does not work as of 2010-03-16 on XP SP3 with fully updated IE7.
This is also a reference to The Book of Mozilla, an Easter egg accessed on the Netscape and
Mozilla browsers in the same way.
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.
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 and can be run on all of Microsoft's operating systems
released since Windows 95 including Windows 8.
Pictures of everyone involved with the Hover!
project are displayed along the maze walls upon completion of initialization of an introductory
level.
Xbox The Xbox contained developer credits in the
dashboard.
Inserting an audio CD and ripping it with the name "<>" would trigger it.
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 Word from 97 to
2013 or 2004 to 2011 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) 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 and 2010, 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.
In Microsoft Word 2013, the text was replaced again with
Video provides a powerful way to help you prove your point.
When you click Online Video, you can paste in the embed code for the video you want to
add.
You can also type a keyword to search online for the video that best fits your document.
To make your document look professionally produced, Word provides header, footer, cover
page, and text box designs that complement each other.
For example, you can add a matching cover page, header, and sidebar.
Click Insert and then choose the elements you want from the different galleries.
Themes and styles also help keep your document coordinated.
When you click Design and choose a new Theme, the pictures, charts, and SmartArt graphics
change to match your new theme.
When you apply styles, your headings change to match the new theme.
Save time in Word with new buttons that show up where you need them.
To change the way a picture fits in your document, click it and a button for layout options appears
next to it.
When you work on a table, click where you want to add a row or a column, and then click
the plus sign.
Reading is easier, too, in the new Reading view.
You can collapse parts of the document and focus on the text you want.
If you need to stop reading before you reach the end, Word remembers where you left off
- even on another device.
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, 2010, and 2013, 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() gives the following text:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
Maecenas porttitor congue massa.
Fusce posuere, magna sed pulvinar ultricies, purus lectus malesuada libero, sit amet commodo
magna eros quis urna.
Nunc viverra imperdiet enim.
Fusce est.
Vivamus a tellus.
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.
Proin pharetra nonummy pede.
Mauris et orci.
Typing =lorem(N) will produce "N" lines of lorem ipsum text.
When "N" is larger than 27, the function begins to repeat itself.
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 directory with the name con 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.
This also blocks modding of many obfuscated video games, such as Minecraft, which uses
the name "aux.class".
It is also not possible to rename or create a file with "aux" in the title even in a batch
file, thus, advanced editing tools are needed to make or rename a file or directory to aux.
"DeskBar" was feature planned by Microsoft to be introduced in Windows 98.
With the help of this feature, Windows 98 users could download Desktop toolbars from
their favorite websites.
These mini toolbars could update themselves automatically based on a predefined time interval
and could provide latest information from the websites so users didn't have to visit
the websites in web browsers.
Microsoft did implement this feature in Windows 98 beta builds and thought that webmasters
will develop such toolbars for their websites but they didn't like this idea and so Microsoft
planned to remove this feature from Windows 98 RTM version.
They decided to hide the tab and that's why this tab was not functional because the necessary
code to connect this tab functionality with Desktop toolbars was not present in Windows
98.
Windows includes a number of MIDI files for troubleshooting purposes.
In Windows 3.1, CANYON.MID and PASSPORT.MID can be found in the directory :\Windows\Media,
with some .WAV and .RMI files.
In Windows ME and later versions, these were replaced by ONESTOP.MID, FLOURISH.MID, and
TOWN.MID.
These files allowed for product support technicians to diagnose problems with MIDI playback without
requiring the user to go to a Web page and download a known-good MIDI file.
In Windows XP, a .WMA file named title 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.
In versions of Windows from 95 to 8.1, a feature called Phone Dialer is available that allows
one to place a call through their phone port, provided they have one on their computer.
This was only documented in Windows 95-98.
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.
In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, the game Minesweeper if the user starts the game, types "xyzzy",
and presses shift and enter simultaneously, the top left-most pixel of the monitor will
be white or black when the mouse is hovered above a square, indicating that the square
is either safe or mined, respectively.
Microsoft Windows 7 "God Mode"
The so-called Windows 7 "God Mode" is commonly mistaken for an easter egg.
Creating a directory that references a specific global unique identifier allows for the creation
of a shortcut to a location; in the case of "God Mode" it creates a control panel applet
with all control panel items view enabled.
Port 666 In Windows, port number 666 uses a service
named "doom".
This is a reference to the Number of the Beast.
The port was originally used for the Doom 95 game, but port 666 has remained labeled
"doom" since.
Notes
References