Work for a mid-size IT shop in India that sells IT services to US companies especially in Y2K remediation area. Have 5 servers and over 200 clients (machines, that is). Recently checked with system admininstrator if machines are checked for Y2K. Answer: most bought in 98, 99 - so are compliant, besides, vendor promised compliance, so no check required. Recently ran Y2K check on my client PC. Result: Rollover failure. And this in an IT company that sells Y2K remediation services. Can't imagine end-user companies. Afraid. Very.

-- Not Revealing (notrevealing@afraid.com), December 19, 1999

Answers

Yikes! Which y2k check did you run? What do you think are the implications? I'm not an IT, but I'm sure when the big guns get up this morning they'll have lots of Q's and tips.

No one will pressure you for any info that you feel might divulge the company id. But the more technical details you are able to comfortably relay will help the other pros rally to support.

Anyway, since I'm not IT, I would be most interested in what you as a pro see as the implications. Are you predominantly servicing banking? communications? e-business?

You are encouraged to "spin" trivial details to protect the annonimity:)

-- Hokie (va@va.com), December 19, 1999.

Shop services several different industries including autopart makers. Check was on RTC rollover.

Idea conveyed was: if an IT shop is so complacent about Y2K remediation, what about end-user companies? Implication: a large number of system failures, big and small, all over.

-- Not Revealing (notrevealing@afraid.com), December 19, 1999.

It's gonna be one huge life-threatening mess.

QUESTION: Can a computer be remediated AFTER the rollover if electricity is still on?

Or is it permanently damaged in any way?

-- IT dummy (questions@many.vexed), December 19, 1999.

In my experience, all RTC's fail rollover tests. By design, all of them store the date using a 2-digit year.

The solution is simple and fool-proof: Power down, reboot, and manually enter the date (preferably using the DOS date command) using 4-digits.

Do it once, and the RTC is good to go another 1000 years or so...

Now, about the software, well, that's a bit trickier...

If I am incorrect on this, someone please correct me...

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), December 20, 1999.

Actually, it'd be good to go another 100 years or so... Then simply repeat the same procedure (tell your great-grandchildren).

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), December 20, 1999.

IT Dummy: you just asked a ? that caused me to get it almost 18 mos ago. If the power is off, obviously you use generators to try to fix whatever failed. Once the generators run out of fuel, what then? You need electricity to run computers and the computers to run the electric company...............vicious catch 22.

-- preparing (preparing@home.com), December 20, 1999.