PowerPoint Punishment Sent Users Into an Infinite Loop
The Register, Monday, April 27th, 2026
Colleagues in the early 2000s pranked coworkers by creating looping PowerPoint presentations of their screenshots.
In this installment of The Register's "Who, Me?" column, a reader named Marcus recounts an elaborate office prank from the early 2000s where he and colleagues would screenshot a victim's screen, paste it into a looping PowerPoint presentation set to require the ESC key to exit, and then launch the presentation.
The victims would become confused and panicked when their mouse clicks and keyboard presses appeared to have no effect, leading them to attempt futile actions on the frozen screenshot. Marcus and his colleagues even created variations with fake IT warning dialogue boxes and blue screens of death to enhance the prank's effectiveness, though they would mercifully intervene if they feared someone might lose work by force-rebooting their system.
The prank exploited a quirk in early Windows where a looping PowerPoint presentation would prevent the screensaver from running, making it nearly impossible to escape without knowing the specific ESC key solution.