A little too late for April Fools, but.....

[Chicago Jake]

I just discovered a great prank you can play on people. Quite by accident. I was furiously typing up some notes, a little too fast, and I chanced upon a keystroke combination that TURNED MY SCREEN SIDEWAYS!

I was trying to do the old "CTRL-LEFT-ARROW" combo to move the cursor back a couple of words, but must have slipped and fat-fingered something else instead.

I had no idea what I had done, but the screen image was rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, so the START button was on the bottom right corner, and the menu bar of the program was along the left edge. The words all streamed from bottom to top. The cursor was likewise re-oriented and the mouse was acting screwy, although it made sense if I turned my head (and mouse) sideways.

A reboot didn't help at all. Fortunately, I had another computer handy so I didn't have to deal with it in my search for a solution. A quick Google search on "windows screen rotation" turned up the answer: CTRL-ALT-ARROW (any arrow) will reorient the screen in the direction of the arrow! I must have hit CTRL-ALT-LEFT (which makes sense, given what I was trying to do). A simple CTRL-ALT-UP-ARROW put everything back to rights.

So..... on to the trick! Next time you feel like fucking with someone, just sneak up to their keyboard when they aren't looking and toss in a quick CTRL-ALT-DOWN-ARROW and you'll turn their screen upside down! Hilarity ensues!!

Try it on your friends and neighbors, and be sure to file a trip report.......Jake

[Alice]

Just tried it on my laptop...no go. I'll have to try it on one of the desktops.

[Captain Gary]

Doesn't work on this desktop either!

[Chicago Jake]

Well, crap. It doesn't work on my Dell Desktop at work, either. It definitely worked on my Toshiba laptop at home, though.......Jake

edited.....A ha!!

Do a right-click on your desktop, then select Graphics Options >> Rotations, and you can enable the rotation function if it is currently disabled (which would be wise, as I found out the hard way).

[♥ COVID-19♥]

Different Windows versions? Different chipset? This could be ROM-based functionality. The old Compaq laptops used to have a command something like Ctrl-Alt-> or Ctrl-Shift-> or something like that to redirect video output to an external monitor, but that only worked on the Compaqs.