The Daily Hacker 10/10/13: Un-Click It
This isn't really a hacking thing, more of a computer troll. In case you're wondering, I'm gearing up for a special Daily Hacker post on the twelfth, so I'm pretty much posting easy stuff in the meantime.
Anyways, this is pretty simple. You're disabling all the icons on the desktop, and even the toolbar (maybe). It requires absolutely no coding, and can be done in less than five minutes.
First, close out all windows and take a screenshot with win + prntscrn. It'll save it to your clipboard. Open Paint and type ctrl + v to paste it. Save this file as whatever you want, but make sure the extension is .png. Set it as the wallpaper. Nifty, right?
Now, rightclick on the desktop and go to View. Uncheck "Show Desktop Icons". Now, it looks like the desktop is the same, right?
Disabling the toolbar is tricky. Depending on what version of Windows you have, your best bet might be auto-hiding it and putting it at the top of the screen. If you're using Windows XP, I believe that there's a value in a part of the registry that you can change, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I really have no idea when it comes to registry values, except for a few things. The registry is an incredibly delicate part of your computer, and you should avoid directly editing it as much as possible unless you know exactly what you're doing. But I digress.
If you've managed to completely disable the toolbar, then you've performed admirably and this will be hilarious if someone tries to use your computer. If the taskbar is still there, just hidden, then you likely can't do much better. Still, it'll be funny for a bit.
I'll try to find out if there's a registry value that you can edit to disable the toolbar without totally destroying the universe. I'm positive that it exists somewhere, but I don't know where and the registry is quite possibly the largest and most delicate part of any computer, so I don't want to make a mistake. Until then, happy trolling!