The prank that's being concocted at work involves sensitive computer equipment. I've never crashed the dialer before, mostly because I do not, as a rule, touch the dialer.

We remote in to the machine in the server room that runs the dialer. I am working up two (or more) desktop wallpapers.

One is the background color of the server in question, with a telnet window open to a dialer crash -- and the taskbar showing an open telnet window.
The other will be a remote desktop window on top of the usual wallpaper of the computer in question, complete with taskbar, with a shot of said faked dialer crash cunningly pasted in.

Add wallpaper, set taskbar to auto-hide.

Instant fake dialer crash.

Goodness, I love screenshots.
Goodness, I love the fact that standard operating procedure is to take a screenshot and send it out with the incident report every time the dialer crashes.

This is one that's good for a second's shocker, followed by relieved laughter.