List of Easter eggs in Microsoft products

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]

Early easter eggs

In Microsoft QBasic, there is an easter egg where the developers' names can be seen at start up, printed in colorful text, flying in one letter at a time from every corner.^[2] This only works in QBasic, not the older QuickBASIC, and is best seen on an older, slower machine.

Windows

Windows 3.0 has a developer credits page which may be accessed by setting the focus to the desktop (by minimizing all windows and clicking on an open area of the desktop) then typing win30 followed by, in quick succession, F3 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 two visible easter eggs, both of which reference the Microsoft Bear, which was the mascot of the Windows 3.1 development team.^[3] One was the developer credits, where the Bear, along with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Brad Silverberg, present 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.^[4] The other one was a reference to a fictitious file named BEAR.EXE in the properties window for the MS-DOS Prompt.^[5] Internally, there was another egg, where several internal system functions (although having meaningful internal names) were exported from user.exe as BEARNNN (where NNN is the ordinal number of the function) in his honor and to discourage their use by incautious third party software developers.

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

During the development of Microsoft Windows 95, the shell developers had several stuffed animals as mascots. In addition to the Microsoft Bear, there were two bunnies as well, the smaller 16-bit Bunny and the larger 32-bit Bunny. The bunnies' names referred to the fact that Windows 95 was the transitional OS.^[3] The Microsoft Bunny has an exported function named after him, BUNNY_351 in krnl386.exe.^[6] Also, the Bunny is the icon for the Microsoft Party Line (rumor.exe) in some pre-release versions of Windows 95.

Windows 98 has a credits screen easter egg.^[7]

A drawing of the Microsoft Bear 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, which claimed that the files were part of a virus.^[8] See SULFNBK.EXE for a similar hoax.

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.^[9]

An Easter egg that displays the names of all the volcanoes in the United States is found in the "3Dtext" screensaver on all versions of Microsoft Windows including it prior to Windows XP.^[10]

Windows 2000 and XP have an undocumented texture in the pipes (sspipes.scr) screensaver that makes the pipes red and white similar to candy canes.^[11]

Three images are embedded in the surface of Windows Vista's installation DVD. On one of the images you can see the faces of the members of Microsoft's antipiracy team who worked on the hologram.^[12]

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 (entered in Tools Options) was appended to the end of the "Thanks" section of the credits.

Office 4.3

The tip of the day would sometimes display the following fun and inspirational tips. They could also be viewed in the help file. This first appeared in Office 4.3, and also appeared in Office 95, and 97.

• 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.

Office 95

• Microsoft Excel contained a hidden Doom-like mini-game called "The Hall of Tortured Souls".^[13]

Office 97

• Microsoft Excel contained a hidden flight simulator.^[14][15]
• Microsoft Word contained a hidden pinball game.^[16]

• Microsoft Access contained a hidden simulation of the Magic 8 Ball toy. This also works in Access 2000.^[17]

Office 2000

Using Microsoft Excel 2000 and the Microsoft Office Web Components, a small 3-D game called "Dev Hunter" (inspired by Spy Hunter) is accessible.^[18][19] DirectX must be installed for this to work, and the egg is incompatible with certain service pack upgrades. On the roadway shown in this game, a list of comments appear, 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 SPAM

Office 2004 Mac

The game Asteroids is included in the Microsoft Office Notifications application.^[20]

Microsoft internet products

Internet Explorer

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.^[21] 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.^[22]

Bing

Searching for "snake game" caused a game of Snake to appear.^[23]

Microsoft games or gaming consoles

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^[24] 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.

Microsoft Flight Simulator X

In the Mission 'Secret Shuttle' Your call sign is changed mid flight to a call sign that starts with Longhorn. Then, after landing at Area 51 you hear over the radio, a request from another aircraft for departure clearance who's call sign starts with Vista. Longhorn was the development codename for the then-upcoming Windows Vista operating system, which was released worldwide in 2007. Microsoft Flight Simulator X was released in 2006.

Xbox

The Xbox contained developer credits in the dashboard. Inserting an audio CD and ripping it with the name "<<Eggsßox>>" would trigger it.^[25]

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 (Windows) or 2004 to 2011 (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.^[26] 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, consectetur 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" (where N is an integer) 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.^[27]

Microsoft Windows

In Microsoft Windows, it is not possible to create or rename a directory with the name con (short for "console") because it is a reserved DOS device name along with prn, aux, "lpt" or "com" (followed by a number) and nul. This has been subject to a hoax that claims Microsoft is unable to explain why.^[28]

There were 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.^[29]

DeskBar was a feature Microsoft planned to introduce in Windows 98. This would allow users to download desktop toolbars (deskbars) from their favorite websites. These mini-toolbars could update themselves automatically at predefined times, supplying the latest information from the websites without the need to launch a web browser. Microsoft did implement this feature in Windows 98 beta builds, but webmasters showed little interest and the feature was subsequently hidden in the Windows 98 RTM version.^[30]

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 <drive>:\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 allows 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.^[31] CSSAMP1.MID can also appear if Canon drivers are installed. In Windows XP, a .WMA file named title (an environmental mix by Brian Eno) is found under the system directory.^[32] 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 Windows Server 2003 and some builds of Longhorn, title.wma is updated (No Hay Problema by Pink Martini).

In versions of Windows from 95 to 10, a feature called Phone Dialer is available that allows one to place a call through one's phone port, provided they have one on their computer. This was only documented in Windows 95-98.^[33]

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, the game Minesweeper if the user starts the game, types "xyzzy", and presses right-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.^[34] (The first click anywhere in Minesweeper is never a mine. A click on a 'black' square, as first click, moves that mine away.)

Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and 10 "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