85 Responses

1. Angel - win $100 on my blog August 21st, 2007 at 12:39 pm

   1

   While these are cool, I don’t believe that Microsoft can’t explain them.

2. Eine Sammlung an “Ostereiern” (Easter Eggs) - Tolle Webseiten August 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm

   2

   [...] bin ich durch einen Post von Desi Baba wieder darauf aufmerksam geworden, dass wenn man z.B. in Word =rand(200,99) eingibt und Enter [...]

3. Dj Flush August 21st, 2007 at 3:52 pm

   3

   Magic #1 is not really a magic and Microsoft has gave an explanation for it

   The reason why you cannot save a folder named CON is because it is a function used by Windows itself

4. Fouad Zaryouh Blog » Microsoft Secret Revealed for Desinotes.com August 21st, 2007 at 4:35 pm

   4

   [...]  Desinotes.com is a great blog about online business, the articles are sometime quit interesting to read. I was looking at my subscribed RSS using NetVibes of course when I saw the last post by desinotes.com titled“Three Things that Microsoft Can?t Explain!” [...]

5. fouad zaryouh August 21st, 2007 at 4:37 pm

   5

   Hi,

   Hey I found all the answers for the bugs !
   http://www.zaryouh.com/2007/08/21/microsoft-secret-revealed-for-desinotescom/

   take care and keep doing good job.

6. Brad August 22nd, 2007 at 2:52 am

   6

   Interesting.

7. nismar August 22nd, 2007 at 8:24 am

   7

   Tested the third magic rand(200,99) Interesting. Keep helping new bloggers.

8. nelly August 22nd, 2007 at 11:25 am

   8

   Hey like the magic.. in the Magic 3 i tired others numbers like rand (199, 99) or rand (200, 98) but the same thing come on the screen.. check it out..

9. Vikas August 22nd, 2007 at 11:59 pm

   9

   =rand (100)

   Try this and you will get the same result as #3

10. agentn August 25th, 2007 at 4:59 pm

    10

    Very cool! Switch to mac, that’s what I say!

    Submitted this post to http://www.charchaa.com/three_strange_things_microsoft_cant_explain_on_windows

11. himanshu August 26th, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    11

    It’s a test feature. It’s been in Word for a long time.

    You can vary the numbers to get a different number of results. The first number is the amount of lines, and the second the amount of times the sentence is printed per line.

    The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet. As such, it’s a convenient test phrase when testing things like fonts and markup.

    testing take efforts

12. Mukund Lahoty August 28th, 2007 at 4:01 am

    12

    The last one is very common it was even in Chetan hagats novel….
    The second one did not work on my vista and the first one was admittedly interesting…..

13. XippiX.nl | De Esmée Denters onder de weblogs! » Wat Microsoft niet kan August 29th, 2007 at 10:54 am

    13

    [...] Microsoft niet kan verklaren is bijvoorbeeld waarom het aanmaken van een nieuwe map met het woord “CON” niet kan. Zo [...]

14. Fred Garvin August 29th, 2007 at 12:19 pm

    14

    CON is short for console and is a reserved word used by the system. Not really that hard to figure out.

15. Tofudisan August 29th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

    15

    “=rand (x,y)” (where x = any number and y

16. Jay August 29th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

    16

    #1 – Easy. It’s because they’re restricted keywords held over from DOS. Anyone who has worked (or developed) on MS operating systems for a long time should know that. Microsoft can definitely explain that – they even fixed an issue relating to it several years ago.

    http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/fq00-017.mspx

    CON – Console
    LPT – Line Printer
    COM1 – Serial Port 1
    COM2 – Serial Port 2

    Numerous others.

17. Nick Hegenbarth August 29th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

    17

    The sequence “CON” is an old MS-DOS reserved word. “CON” means console. Here are the other reserved words: PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9.

18. Tim August 29th, 2007 at 2:48 pm

    18

    Actually I remember back in the old DOS days, when you didn’t have an editor on your boot disk you could do a:
    copy con

    What you type from here on is saved in the file as an exact copy. So you had to write the contents of the file without errors and end the file with ctrl-m

19. Tim August 29th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    19

    Should have said “copy con somefile”

20. lw64 August 29th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    20

    Magic 2 is just a error in notepad, you can get the error with words other than Bush hid the facts, as long as the First word is exactly 4 letters long, the second word has to be 3 letters long, the third word also has to be exactly 3 letters long and the fourth word has to be 5 letters long, so you could type ffff fff fff fffff and get the same result

21. Aaron August 29th, 2007 at 4:41 pm

    21

    i did =rand (200, 98) and it did 231 pages of it, =rand (10, 0) goes to line 11; its real weird
    =rand (01, 01) does one line of it
    theres too many errors like this to count, because its windows
    and bill gates wouldn’t no anyway he just stole the software and patched it together to make an OS

22. Aaron brown August 29th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    22

    they prob. can explain it all, they just don’t want to like how the snoop in ur files every time ur connected to the internet
    they no, believe me they no it all

23. Vinay August 30th, 2007 at 11:27 am

    23

    Thanks to all who have commented and clarified. The post has received overwhelming response. My question is: If Microsoft well knows these things why don’t they have a “Dialog Box” pop up when a user performs this action saying that “CON” is a reserved function or that the others are “Test Features” or whatever. Microsoft is well known for giving detailed & unnecessary instructions (esp by pop up boxes) for every silly thing, how come they missed out leaving this unanswered to an user? A Software Techie might figure this out; but for the average Joe it will look like Magic – As it did to me! – Vinay

24. Scott September 1st, 2007 at 8:42 pm

    24

    In the RAND one, the first number is the number of paragraphs, the second number is the number of sentences in each paragraph.

25. Nick Cellino September 2nd, 2007 at 8:31 am

    25

    A dialog box does pop up when a user tries to name a file with the forbidden words. The message reads, “This file name is reserved by Windows. Choose another name and try again”.

26. 3 cose che Microsoft non potrà mai spiegare « chi non mi ama mi tema September 2nd, 2007 at 8:44 am

    26

    [...] ps. quest’elenco è in parte una traduzione di questo articolo [...]

27. Rash September 2nd, 2007 at 9:44 am

    27

    As I’m sure a lot of people have said, but all these things have been explained. It’s nothing weird about any of them.

28. Twoply September 2nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm

    28

    The European Union has got it right,
    Just slowly leave windows and go linux.

29. CX September 2nd, 2007 at 11:42 pm

    29

    I use a Mac now, switched to mac instead of upgrading to Vista, well NEway, I’ve seen the 1st one and the third one but what happens when you type in Bush hid the facts??

30. Bigduke September 3rd, 2007 at 12:36 am

    30

    OK so I checked up what the notepad bug was, apaprently those boxes belong to the Chinese character set under unicode and when translated using google translator comes out to be “Offer Benren Mount Tou video games seized Meng”, still reading up to find the reason.

31. Brian September 3rd, 2007 at 2:03 am

    31

    The notepad bug is due to a faulty implementation of unicode detection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notepad#Unicode_detection

32. Jill. September 4th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

    32

    it has nothing to do w/ “bush”- it has do do w/ the # of characters. type something in to a new text file w/the same amt of characters as” bush hid the facts” and see what happens

    jill

33. creepyron September 5th, 2007 at 3:02 am

    33

    OMG … i don’t believe this these are freaking crazy.

34. wrxtrash September 5th, 2007 at 7:34 am

    34

    “CON” is a name of device – in Windows you cannot name a file like a device. You’re so smart and you forgot old DOS? How did you create file in it” Hint: “copy CON …”

    “Bush” is just and easter-egg, not a bug. rand() probably too, or it is some debug function they forgot to remove. Notice it is similar to Excel function call.

35. Someone September 5th, 2007 at 11:18 am

    35

    Those things you call unexplainable are all easy to explain.
    The 1st is because it’s a windows function (con meaning console).
    The 2nd is because of notepad not knowing which encoding to use when opening the file.
    The 3rd one is just an easter egg.

36. Stefano Johnson September 5th, 2007 at 9:37 pm

    36

    For #3. “=rand (200,99)” means 200 paragraphs with 99 sentences per paragraph. “=rand (200)” is the same as “=rand (200,5)”. (200,99) seems to be the upper limit. 9 words per sentence… I made an excel chart… I was bored… OMFG… I’m a nerd.

37. spooky September 7th, 2007 at 9:03 pm

    37

    MS doesn’t explain easter eggs because no one explains easter eggs. Almost every OS has them. They’re little gifts from the programmers to those who can find them.

38. ¡Tres cosas que Microsoft no puede explicar! « Breaking News (?) September 7th, 2007 at 9:05 pm

    38

    [...] Fuente Translation: Strellyta! [...]

39. Amol Tarte September 12th, 2007 at 3:46 am

    39

    Its Amazing! I knew 2 of the 3 magics but I didnt know about Notapad!

40. Senan September 13th, 2007 at 2:07 am

    40

    I have been using number 3 as a teacher for over 4 years when I wanted students to place text on a page. You can do the same in Excel except it looks like this:

    =rand()*100

    Then fill down to generate random numbers

41. Nathan Pinno September 16th, 2007 at 2:11 am

    41

    Definately the 3 coolest errors in Microsoft Products. Anyone know of any other?

42. WhiteEagle’s Aerie and Blog » Here’s a cool post about MS bugs… September 16th, 2007 at 2:17 am

    42

    [...] this is a cool post about 3 popular well-known bugs in Microsoft products. All are classics, and even [...]

43. Jason September 17th, 2007 at 8:45 am

    43

    MAGIC 3
    is not really a bug
    and can be explained by microsoft
    its actually a feature of word
    put there to create random text however long you want
    (hence the ‘rand’)

44. Jason September 17th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    44

    also in notepad if you write
    ‘this app can break’ it does the same thing

45. kishor patil September 20th, 2007 at 10:00 pm

    45

    it is really works but how could i get more like this

46. Ravi Prasad September 21st, 2007 at 6:28 am

    46

    chk dis out ….this guy seems to be a expert

    http://arunonfire.blogspot.com/2007/08/create-folder-named-con-in-windows.html

47. Sam Nadir September 21st, 2007 at 6:30 am

    47

    cool man..this really explains how to create the CON folder

    http://arunonfire.blogspot.com/2007/08/create-folder-named-con-in-windows.html

48. Mike September 23rd, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    48

    I wonder if these will work on Vista!

49. Eddie Starr September 24th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    49

    Hey everyone, thanks for being awesome!
    Please help support me, http://www.starrsearch.net

50. chx September 25th, 2007 at 5:36 am

    50

    FYI

    CON is a virtual file for the display screen

    try copying a file to CON and you’ll see it displayed on the screen.

    type this in dos:

    copy sometextfile.txt CON

    and you’ll get sometexfile.txt content displayed on the DOS screen.

    thus the reason why you can’t name a file CON

    if I remember correctly, there are also PRN which redirects to your printer, so if you want to print some thing in MS-DOS, you’d type

    echo Hello World! > PRN

    or

    copy myfile.txt PRN

    it’s a reminiscent of those DOS days.

    and please.. don’t say bill gates can’t explain it unless you’ve asked him yourself.

    that’s just b.s.

51. zorawar September 26th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    51

    1. We can create a folder named CON or LPT or COM by a
    simple way.
    Right click and do create folder process. While naming
    the folder, type ‘CON’ and Hold ALT key & press the
    number 255.
    EX ‘CON’ + (hold alt + ‘255′).

    This process would create a folder named CON and a
    space with it. You cannot explictely give a space
    because windows cuts off the excess spaces before or
    after the name.

    2. Is the difference between ASCII and Unicode. It’s just a matter of Notepad defaults. You see, when you save the file, in the “Encoding” field, the default drop-down is set to ANSI. So, by default, Notepad saves as ANSI. But if you do a File -> Open, the default Encoding is set to Unicode. That’s exactly what happens when you double click a saved file. Notepad knows the path, but not the Encoding. So it uses the default Unicode encoding, which spits the Chinese characters as explained above.
    And that’s about it. No easter eggs, no conspiracies, no Bush interventions. Just plain old Microsoft.

    NOTE:

    There are other strings that cause Notepad to screw up, including “this app can break”, “this api can break”, “this cat can split”, “jane can not dance”, “text wit hou tcaps” and even “abcd efg hij klmno” and “xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx”.

    3. “rand means random in almost all programming languages. This function is
    provided by Microsoft to generate random text in documents for testing
    purposes. If you change the numbers in paranthesis, it will change the
    number of sentences it generates. The first number is the number of
    paragraphs it will generate and the second number is the number of sentences
    to each paragraph. Try it.”

52. Ghillie Suits » Three Things that Microsoft Can’t Explain! by Blogging with Desi Baba October 18th, 2007 at 11:36 am

    52

    [...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt [...]

53. Ghillie Suits » Three Things that Microsoft Can’t Explain! October 26th, 2007 at 1:27 am

    53

    [...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt [...]

54. Jochen November 1st, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    54

    1.con stands for console and therefore, like prn, lpt1, etc, can not be used as a file name
    To demonstrate, on the command line, enter
    copy con test.txt

    then type something
    then hit Ctrl-Z

    There will be a file called test.txt with whatever you typed in in.

    2.File came out fine. If, instead of the instruction, you copy and paste the text, the character set will be wrong.

    3.Is a macro in Word and has nothing to do with Windows.

55. Gaurab November 8th, 2007 at 10:25 am

    55

    expln

    2. SAVE THE TEXT IN UTF-8 FORMAT IN NOTEPAD, EVERYTHING WORKS FINE

56. A November 13th, 2007 at 10:23 pm

    56

    So, that second one with the Bush hid the facts. I tried a couple others. This app can break did the same thing, but Bush hid the truth actually worked. This means the bug isn’t necessarily in the pattern of 4-3-3-5, but the specific word choice. Interesting

57. M November 14th, 2007 at 10:14 am

    57

    In case someone wants to mess with their computer.
    You cannot create a folder named “Com” but you can rename an existing folder to Com.
    If its a problem to the OS to have a folder named Com then this just goes to show how well tested MS software really is.

58. iwmpop December 1st, 2007 at 6:18 pm

    58

    “CON” – well I typed exactly as written into my bookmarks, create new folder, and it did so!
    What was in the folder? Well…..”Three things that Microsoft Can’t Explain…..!”

59. Dah dah dummy December 26th, 2007 at 8:20 am

    59

    You mean *you* can’t explain them, because you’re dim.

    Does “desi” mean “fucking imbecile”?

60. Saim Baig January 8th, 2008 at 4:45 pm

    60

    These are very cool tricks.Where did u find these?Thanks for the share.

61. Manav January 9th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    61

    Amazing tricks, i read d comments too, but the beauty lies in..how and wer from did u get dem all???, logics behind dem, is totallu a different story,
    tahnx a lot.

62. UMAR January 24th, 2008 at 8:56 pm

    62

    I KNOW WHY (CON) FOLDER IS NOT MAKE
    BECOUSE CON WORD IS A VARIABLE AND THE START IN THE FOLDER SETTING THE PROGRAMMER LET A VARIABLE AS A (CON = NEW FOLDER)
    THATS WHY CON IS NOT TYPE IN FOLDER. BASICALLY CON MEAN NEW FOLDER.
    TELL ME SIR I AM RIGHT. SIR I AM KNOW I AM RIGHT.
    THANKS

63. windows vista serial number February 4th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    63

    windows vista serial number…

    haha gotta love Windows……

64. Ryan March 1st, 2008 at 11:22 am

    64

    1. that “bush hid the facts” thing has been explained. I can’t remember it offhand, but it also happens when u type other things in the same fashion (one four-letter word, two three letter words, and a five letter word.)

    2. only one of these is an actual bug. that =rand(a,b) function has been there for a while and is a TESTING FUNCTION.

    3. microsoft can explain each of these.

    you fail.

65. John April 5th, 2008 at 11:39 am

    65

    Nice Troll. You’ve hooked a lot of responders!!!

66. Kiruba May 17th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    66

    i have the reason why folder names CON Cant be created in Windows and not only CON they are many other words similar to that.. check out my post..

    http://kiruba-for-you.blogspot.com/2009/02/for-what-reason-we-cannot-rename-any.html

67. Nimbubbax October 20th, 2009 at 7:17 pm

    67

    24]

68. neilbonvarene October 20th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    68

    [color=green][size=24][/size][/color]

69. WattOntozyNot October 21st, 2009 at 6:42 pm

    69

    [color=green][size=24]??? ? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ??? ???????[/size][/color]
    ? ?? ?? ??? ????????? ???? ? ??????? ?????????? ??????????????? ???????? ??????? ?? ?? ?? ????????????? ???????? ? ????? ???????? ? ?????????
    ????? ??? ???? ??????? ????? ?? ????? ?????????? ???? ?????? ???????? …? ??????? ??? ?? ??????? ?? ????? ???????? ??? ????? ????????
    ??? ????? ??? ?? ????????? ????? ??????????? ??????? ??????? ??? ???? ????? ????? ???? ??? ? ?????? ????? ???????? ??
    ????? ??? ??????? ????????? ? ??????? ?????????? ????. ????? ???????? ?. ???? ? ?? ? ?????? ?????????? ???????? ???? ???????? ????????? ????????

    ?????? ????? ???
    ??????? ??? ?????? ? ????? ????????? ??????
    ??? ????? ???????? ? ??????????
    ??? ????? ???? ????????
    ????? ???? ? ????????? ?????????
    ????? ???????? ??
    ????? ???????? ?. ????
    «? ?? ???????????? ????? ????? ? ??????»
    ?????????? ???? ?? ????
    ?? ????? ?????? ?? ??? ????? ??????.?????? ???? ?????? ????????? ??????? ????????.

70. Unni February 18th, 2010 at 4:56 am

    70

    reyally good

71. Best Clickbank Products March 13th, 2010 at 4:07 am

    71

    wow, cool. never think about this magic before ;p

    hit gold cap

72. malayalamonline April 1st, 2010 at 7:25 am

    72

    Cool tricks, didnt expect from microsoft

73. latest gadget May 4th, 2010 at 11:29 am

    73

    excellent tips provided in the post .

74. Muzaffar May 24th, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    74

    excellent…………………

75. mytelcoit May 31st, 2010 at 10:09 am

    75

    Hi, thanks for sharing. looking for your next post.
    btw, i found article about voip softphone

76. computea June 18th, 2010 at 11:10 pm

    76

    thanks for sharing. operating system is very complex thing. in some case those anomaly is a message.

77. Traffic Siphon August 23rd, 2010 at 12:42 am

    77

    Nice share man. I tried the 1st and 2nd thing. See what I was able to see after opening the notepad file “?????????” To my surprise there were only small boxes and here on your blog it turned into chines/Japanese or whatever you think

78. Gil Roarty October 6th, 2010 at 12:18 am

    78

    Great News website. I love this news site

79. frodo November 2nd, 2010 at 6:03 pm

    79

    All of these can be explained. Just another mindless blogger who finds something and reposts it without doing a shred of research. And then there are all the mindless idiots who follow, “Wow great post.” It’s NOT a great post. I suppose the same people believe all the chain letters they get as well.

80. Stepard January 11th, 2011 at 1:21 pm

    80

    MAGIC #2 is not working anymore???

81. Francina Kocaj January 29th, 2011 at 3:03 pm

    81

    I keep listening on the news converse about getting totally free on-line grant applications so I’ve been trying about for the best web site to get one. Thank you for your aid!

82. kela April 16th, 2011 at 9:34 pm

    82

    oye lund kishore!, its not magic, dese are explainable bugs…

83. ABDULLAH May 6th, 2011 at 7:18 am

    83

    Press ALT 255 and then u can name the folder CON
    chk it out

84. marlboro cigarette September 14th, 2011 at 12:55 pm

    84

    cheap marlboro reds

85. Dale Kamealoha November 2nd, 2011 at 11:16 pm

    85

    Very Nice site I found it on the search engines , are you using wordpress with this blog? or some different?