Despite (or perhaps because of) being a simple operating system that almost everyone uses, the Microsoft Windows line is able to spawn dozens of Internet memes.
Please add entries in the following format:
- The meme. [[labelnote:Explanation]]The explanation behind the meme, if necessary.[[/labelnote]] ExplanationLike this.
- Further mutations and successor memes, if any.
Memes:
- No more disk space. Delete Windows? [Yes] [No]ExplanationWindows error messages pop up from time to time on the system. Of course, custom messages like this exist on the internet.
- Delete Windows? Your computer's running low on storage space. We can create some space by deleting Windows. [Delete] [Dismiss]ExplanationA Windows 10/11 version of the above.
- It looks like you are editing a TV Tropes page. Would you like some help?ExplanationThe Microsoft Office Assistant in versions of Office from 1997 to 2003 would deliver messages like this, creating an Unwanted Assistance situation. The phrase comes from one of the more common prompts that would pop up, "It looks like you are writing a letter. Would you like some help?"
- Alt+F4ExplanationThis keyboard combination abruptly closes the active window. Usually used as a joke by telling people that it does something else.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del ExplanationThe most well known Windows keyboard shortcut. Before XP, this opened Task Manager (other versions display Security Options, but opening Task Manager is one of the options). This is also the combination you're required to enter if Secure Logon is turned on. In the MS-DOS era, it rebooted the computer.
- Delete the system32 folder; it'll speed up your computer by a lot.ExplanationThe system32 folder is actually a very important folder where important system files are located. It's very delicate too; so much as renaming it puts the system beyond repair. Modern versions of Windows are very strict about letting it be deleted or altered. The meme comes from users on Image Boards telling it in the form of "advice" to newbies as a way of Trolling.
- Blue Screen of Death
- That must be why we're not shipping Windows yet. ExplanationAt COMDEX 98, Bill Gates himself attempted to demonstrate the plug-and-play support of Windows 98 by plugging in a scanner. However, it resulted in a Blue Screen of Death, leading to him jokingly saying that was why they weren't shipping the OS yet.
- Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We're just collecting some error info, and then we'll restart for you. :( ExplanationThe text on the Blue Screen Of Death for Windows 8 and onwards. It sparked interest in memes relating to the BSoD memes due to the inclusion of the ":(" emoticon, which was added to make the screen appear less frightening.
- My roflcopter goes soi soi soi soi soi!
ExplanationOne of the preinstalled voices for the Ease of Accessibility features up to XP, Microsoft Sam, has this little gem. Typing in "soy" or "soi" will come out as "schwa", and is commonly said to sound similar to a helicopter blade. It's an Ascended Glitch in later versions of Windows, whose text-to-speech voices pronounce "soy" correctly but not "soi". - Rainbow effectExplanationA Fan Nickname given to the "Hue, Cycles Entire Spectrum" effect in Windows Movie Maker, a simplistic video editor that once came pre-installed with the OS. This effect overlays slowly transitioning rainbow colors over the clip.
- Microsoft Research SongsmithExplanationThis official software creates AI-generated background music when the user sings into the microphone. It wasn't long until people started feeding the program with audio other than singing voices, and the software's problems came into vision.
- WingdingsExplanationA series of three pre-installed fonts (with a fourth "Webdings" font added in Windows 98) that have various types of iconography in place of characters. They were not intended to be used in the traditional sense; they were for printing companies and the like to easily put decorative elements onto documents without having to deal with large image files that wasted ink, similar to modern day Emojis. Because of how unusual the fonts are, they've become a relatively popular form of cryptography in the modern day.
- NYC ExplanationTyping "NYC" in all caps in the original Wingdings brings up a skull and crossbones, the Star of David, and a thumbs up, which unfortunately led to numerous antisemitic conspiracy theories. This was by complete coincidence, though. In response, the Webdings font instead brings up an eye, a heart, and a city, in reference to the popular "I Love New York" logo that's used to promote tourism in the state.
- Where Do You Want to Go Today? ExplanationA commercial for Windows 98 shows this text, the slogan for Microsoft during the era, and quickly shows clips of the system while the song "Ludwig’s Boogey” by BMI artist John Hobbs plays. It has since been remade with other operating systems.
- Any keyExplanationThe prompt "Press any key to continue" was commonly mistaken to refer to a key labeled "any", due to the wording of prompts mostly consisting of pressing a specific key such as "press enter". "Any key" just refers to any button on the keyboard.
- Dear Aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all ExplanationWhen Windows Speech Recognition was first unveiled as one of Windows Vista's new features, a demonstrator tried to dictate a letter to his mother. Unfortunately, due to that particular build just happening to be one that had a glitch that uncontrollably amplified and severely distorted all microphone inputs, it interpreted "mom" as "aunt," and his attempts to fix it just added more and more gibberish.
- "Dance Monkey Boy!"ExplanationAn early viral video where Steve Ballmer kicks off Microsoft's 25th anniversary event by screaming and jumping around the stage to the tune of "Get on Your Feet".
- Developers, developers, developers, developers.ExplanationDuring the same event, Ballmer began his presentation by saying the word "developers" multiple times.
- Bliss WallpaperExplanationThe default Windows XP wallpaper named "Bliss" (a stock photo of a green hill in Napa, California) is subject to Photoshopped pictures of it. The wallpaper is very much associated with the OS, and is one of the first things that come to mind when thinking about it.
- Something happenedExplanationWhile some users tried to install Windows 10, they might run into this error that either tells what went wrong, or it tells the user that "Something happened", not telling what the problem was (or it even didn't know what the problem was).
- There's no "End" buttonExplanationIronically, the "Start" button is mostly used to shut down the system. Windows 8 tried to change this using the "settings" charm, but reverted back by also putting the power button on the Start Screen after much criticism. Windows 10 did away with the Start Screen entirely, and introduced a redesigned Start Menu. Windows 11 redesigned the Start Menu further, now being in the center of the screen by default, and focusing more on giving the user quick access to the programs they want to use, though its general function remains largely the same.
- Title.wmaExplanationThe music that plays during Windows XP installation. The song itself goes back much further however, with its first known appearance being used as the menu music for a CD included with some copies of Windows 95 called the "Microsoft Internet Explorer Starter Kit", which educated the user on how to use Internet Explorer. Though, Windows XP is how most people discovered it. The song's metadata labels it as "Windows Welcome music", and only credits Microsoft themselves. However, the song's real artist was later revealed to be a composer named Stan LePard, who uploaded the song to his SoundCloud in 2011 with the name "Windows 98: Velkommen". He also remastered the full track in 2020, theming it after its debut in Internet Explorer Starter Kit (the song was shortened when it was used in 98 and XP).
- Music with Windows SoundsExplanation A YouTube trend is to make music that samples system sounds from a specific Windows version. This is extremely easy to do, as they're simply WAV files stored in the Windows directory under the "Media" folder, which isn't hard to get to at all.
- TV Ding! will ruin your BONG!ExplanationWindows XP is arguably the most popular OS out of all of them. Having the longest support of any OS so far, and being used by nearly everyone during its lifecycle. The system sounds themselves have been ingrained in users' mindsets to the point of gaining iconic status, and have been parodied in many different situations
- TV Ding!
- Microsoft recommends upgrading to Windows 10ExplanationWhen Windows 10 was given a public release, popups started appearing on earlier versions of Windows displaying this message, offering to let the user digitally download Windows 10 for free. The popups, which appear at random, are widely seen as intrusive and annoying, to the point where people started creating tutorials and even full-fledged programs to help people stop the popups from appearing. This led to many jokes revolving around the popups appearing at comically inconvenient times, which became more prominent after an infamous incident where the popup appeared during a weather report on KCCI 8 News. The free upgrade period ended after a year, and so did the free upgrade popup and software; it ultimately "suggested" all pre-10 version of Windows users should upgrade because of "outdated security" while still providing updates during the supported lifetime of the device.
- Comic Sans MSExplanationA once pre-installed font that was stylized after the typeface used by DC Comics. While popular at its time, it was later hated because of how overused it was. Using the font in the present day is universally seen as a lazy font choice. Despite the hatred, it was given a successor font in 2011 called "Comic Sans Pro"
- MS PaintExplanationA bare-bones image editing program that has been bundled with every version of Windows ever since the beginning. It was originally released under the name "Microsoft Paintbrush" (as it was initially just a licensed fork of another early drawing program called "PC Paintbrush"), and was one of the many drawing programs made to show off the potential of the newly-invented computer mouse. Because of how limited it is, it's often the target for Stylistic Suck, though the software is capable of producing good drawings if the user knows what they're doing. It was given a complete overhaul in Windows 7, complete with the patented Ribbon interface, so it's not as useless as it once was
- Windows Updates. The gift that keeps on giving. ExplanationAutomatic Windows Updates tend to have a lot of bugs in them. They don't always install properly, take up a lot of space with little visible impact, tend to auto-restart the computer if that option's left as the default, and often cause as many problems to your system as they fix. ...And they're also free.
- This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.ExplanationThe infamous Windows 9x application crash message. Many clueless users thought they were going to be arrested for "an illegal operation".
- An error has occurred in your program. You will lose any information you entered since your last save.ExplanationAn alternate Windows 9x application crash message, generally used for applications that were originally compatible with Windows 3.x.
- Trope.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close.ExplanationThe Windows XP version.
- Don't Send ExplanationWhen a program crashes, the system gives you the option to send an error report, which would send the crash details over to Microsoft to potentially be fixed in a later update. Most people never bothered. Modern Windows now sends error reports by default, though the user can stop them midway.
- Trope.exe has stopped workingExplanationThe version used in Windows Vista onwards.
- (Not Responding)ExplanationDisplayed on the title bar of an application that has stalled. Usually followed up with the application outright crashing.
- Sticky KeysExplanationPressing Shift 5 times in succession activates Sticky Keys. Designed for people with disabilities, this changes the behavior of the Control, Alt, Shift, and Windows keys so they do not have to be held down to perform keyboard shortcuts. However, many programs, games especially, have situations where the Shift key must be pressed multiple times, which can turn into quite the annoyance if the shortcut is enabled. What's even worse is that loud internal sounds are played whenever Sticky Keys is active by default, and are also unaffected by the volume control. This can be turned off, of course, though the setting is rather hidden.
- Windows 9ExplanationWindows 7 and 8 were simply named after what release of Windows they were. However, there is no Windows 9; it was skipped straight to 10. The widely accepted theory is that this was to prevent older programs from mistaking the OS as Windows 95 or 98.
- Critical alert from MicrosoftExplanationA pop-up ad that claims that the user's PC is infected with a virus, and the user must call Microsoft support to remove it. Often times, these pop-ups use a JavaScript to throw up a never-ending series of dialogue boxes, making it impossible to close out of unless the user uses Task Manager (though, most browsers have since added an option that suppresses these messages by temporarily disabling them all together). In reality, these are scams (mostly from India) made to trick the non tech-savvy into paying money for a service they don't actually need.
- jdbgmgr.exe ExplanationA file found in the System32 folder in versions up to XP. The file has a a gray teddy bear◊ as its icon, which was meant to be an Easter Egg. However, a hoax circulated that this was a virus, and must be deleted. In reality, this program is the Java debugger, meant for developers to test applications (though, if the user has updated Java at all on their system, they don't really need this file anyway)
- SULFNBK.exeExplanationA similar virus hoax pertaining to a file found in the "COMMAND" folder of the Window directory in 98 and ME. Though this file is more crucial, as it's what allows the OS to allow filenames to be more than eight characters in length (later version of Windows did away with this file, as newer file systems could store longer file names on their own without compromise). People believing the hoax is a bit more understandable, as its icon is a crudely written "LFNBK", which is reminiscent of actual viruses during that time.
- SULFNBK.exeExplanationA similar virus hoax pertaining to a file found in the "COMMAND" folder of the Window directory in 98 and ME. Though this file is more crucial, as it's what allows the OS to allow filenames to be more than eight characters in length (later version of Windows did away with this file, as newer file systems could store longer file names on their own without compromise). People believing the hoax is a bit more understandable, as its icon is a crudely written "LFNBK"
- Internet Explorer is only good for downloading other browsers.ExplanationInternet Explorer was the web browser that came pre-installed with Windows all the way until Windows 10. While it was a good way to surf the internet for the first few years of its life, when competition arose, the browser became slow and outdated by comparison. While the browser eventually saw improvements (even outperforming other browsers in places, such as performance, and especially its HTML5 support), by that point, it was mostly only used after fresh installs of the OS to immediately download another web browser. It has since been replaced with Microsoft Edge, which has had a more positive reaction, and a decent userbase. Especially with its codebase moving over to a Chromium fork
- onestop.midExplanationOne of the three MIDI files that can be found in "C:/Windows/Media" since around Windows XP. It's commonly assumed that the MIDI files are simply Easter Eggs. In actuality, these files are for technicians to troubleshoot MIDI playback without having to download anything. Onestop in particular makes heavy use of Program Changing, which allows any given MIDI channel to change its instrument patch mid-song. This makes the song optimal for diagnosing problems with MIDI devices, and testing if said device properly follows the General MIDI standard (i.e. an instrument is set to the wrong patch number). In 2019, the composer, David Yackley, remade the song as part of a collective album where artists redid their songs without the limitations of MIDI itself.
- FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 explanationA license key for Windows XP that was bundled with a leaked copy of the OS. Became infamous and highly used among computer nerds, especially thanks to a famous photo◊ of someone holding up a burned XP CD - with the license key written on it - in front of a Microsoft sign counting down the days to XP's launch. Microsoft ultimately blacklisted the key in 2004.
- 3D MazeExplanationA screensaver included with every version of Windows from 95 to Me. As its name implies, it consists of a randomly-generated maze rendered in OpenGL, and is navigated through until it's eventually solved, then a new one is generated. It gives off the appearance of a game, largely resembling First-Person Shooters of the time such as Doom or Wolfenstein 3-D. But since it's just a screensaver, any key press or mouse movement will just return the user back to their Windows session. Fortunately, it's been turned into games quite a number of times.
- bush hid the factsExplanationA bug present in the pre-Vista versions of Notepad. If the user types "bush hid the facts", saves it, and then opens it again, the text will be replaced with a series of rectangles (in actuality, it's a bunch of Chinese characters that doesn't translate into anything, but most fonts just throw up mojibakes because the characters aren't present). While "bush hid the facts" is the most well-known method, the bug can be triggered with any sentence with the exact same amount of characters and spaces separating them. The bug is caused due to the charset detection mistaking the encoding as UTF-16LE, and will instead interpret the text as such.
- Evolution of the trash can icon ExplanationA chart that details the progression of the design for the Recycle Bin icon (despite the image erroneously calling it the trash can), but with the current year being replaced with an Acceptable Target of the user's choice, like a currently infamous piece of media or, if it's Biting-the-Hand Humor, the user's own icon
- Fisher-Price ThemeExplanationSome users referred to Windows XP's default visual style by this nickname because it supposedly looks like a children's toy with its soft appearance and use of primary colors.
- Change da world...my final message. Goodb ye.ExplanationIn 2019, a Twitter user added Windows 95's iconic start-up sound, composed by Brian Eno, and a voiceover onto a bizarre image with this typo-filled caption. This led to many such bizarre images, and the sound has since been used for characters disappearing in other contexts.
- It's now safe to turn off your computer. ExplanationThis screen was introduced in Windows 95, as well as Windows NT for non-ACPI computers. The Windows 95-Me version of this screen is well known with it's orange text on a black screen. Windows XP has the Windows logo with the text, Vista/7 has the text in white and Windows 10 has the text changed into "It's now safe to power off the system", which is the current version of the screen, though they were less known than the 95 one due to ACPI becoming much more common.
- Windows Never Released ExplanationRepresents Fanon versions of Windows, usually with remixed startup and shutdown sounds and custom themes
