Notepad Bug In Vista

Here’s an interesting little oddity in Windows that will keep any conspiracy theorists you know entertained for hours.

Here’s how it works, open Notepad (Start > Programs > Accessories) and type the following ‘bush hid the facts’ (without the quotes). Now go to File > SaveAs, call the file bush.txt, click OK and close Notepad. Run Notepad again and open the file and see what happens. Spooky! Your text message will have been scrambled, turned into foreign characters or little boxes… Now try it with ‘moon pix are fakes’ and the same thing happens, it’s uncanny!

The more eagle-eyed amongst you may have spotted something. In both cases the messages comprise an even number of lower case letters in the form ‘xxxx xxx xxx xxxxx’. This combination of characters just happens to trigger a little known bug in Windows that prevents it from checking short strings of ASCII characters, and it seems to have escaped the attention of the Vista development team because it works in that version of Notepad as well.

Now see if you can come up with a Notepad boggling phrase to confound and amuse your friends. If you like these tips then there are hundred more for you to try at: www.pctoptips.co.uk