This came by email today from a friend. Not being computer savvy, I don't know if the info is valid or not. I'm just passing it along to the forum for interested persons to check out. No flames, please.....just FYI if it is valuable, if not......disregard.

Windows98 and 95 must be set for y2k even though it is "y2k compliant". You may think your PC is "Y2K" compliant, and some little tests may have actually affirmed that your hardware is compliant, and you may even have a little company sticker affixed to your system saying "Y2K Compliant" ...but you'll be surprised that Windows may still crash unless you do this

simple exercise below.

I know that I had not thought of this and my computer would have failed Jan1, 2000. Easy fix but something Microsoft seems to have missed in certifying their software as Y2K compliant. This is simple to do, and but VERY important. Click on "START," Click on "SETTINGS." Double click on "Control Panel," Double click on "Regional settings" icon or International icon (look for the little worldglobe). Click on the "Date" tab at the top of the page.(last tab on the topright). Where it says, "Short Date Sample," look and see if it shows

a "two digit" year format ("YY"). Unless you've previously changed it (and you probably haven't) --it will be set incorrectly with just the twoY's for the year.. it needs to be four! That's because Microsoft

made the 2 digits setting the default setting for Windows 95, Windows 98 and NT. This date format selected is the date that Windows feeds *ALL* application software and will not rollover into the year 2000. It will roll over to the year 00. (*) Click on the button across from "Short Date Style" and select the option that shows, "mm/dd/yyyy" or "m/d/yyyy". (Be sure your selection has four y's (years) showing, not just "mm/dd/yy). Then click on "Apply". Then click on "OK" at the button. Easy enough to fix. However, every "as distributed" installation of Windows worldwide is defaulted to fail Y2K rollover... Pass this along to your PC buddies... no matter how much of a guru they think they are... this might be a welcome bit of information!"

-- Kenin Marble (kenin17@yahoo.com), December 21, 1999

Answers

Thanks Kenin -- don't know what the ultimate impact would have been, but I had to change both my 1997 CTX 200mhz Laptop (Win 95) and my 1998 HP 333mhz (Win 98) desktop in the manner described above. Both were indeed set for 2 digit year. Previous testing had not discovered this "feature".

-- TA (sea_spur@yahoo.com), December 21, 1999.

Since I have an MSDN Universal subscription, I have every 32-bit version of Windows MS makes in every language they make it in. (Yes, they sent me probably four hundred CDs so far!)

One of these CDs was dedicated strictly to Y2K and included MS' Y2K compliance checker program, which was mentioned in the thread that spawned this one. (Hit MS' TechWeb site and check for Y2K info to download the checker program. Sorry, don't have an URL but I'm sure someone can find it right quick.)

All variants of Windows 95 (original, OSR2, OSR 2.1), Windows 98 (original and Second Edition), and NT (Workstation, Server, Terminus Server, BackOffice, etc.) can be made Y2K compliant with the proper patches, inasmuch as MS defined the term "compliant." The 2000 betas are intrinsically as ready as they're probably going to get.

For all 95 variants and the original 98, that means downloading patches, so fire up that Windows Update tool and get to downloadin' like now. NT users need Service Pack 5 for compliance. 98 Second Edition and all of the 2000 variants could not care less if it's Y2K or not and test okay.

BUT...

No matter WHAT Windows version you have, you need to do what Kenin said and change the date setting, as if you don't do this the OS will not truly be compliant as the regional settings are used by all manner of application (think Excel and Access, for instance) as well as several OS components. You need to check this for all your machines that run Windows, regardless of whether you've patched the OS and tested successfully.

So... Patch if required to replace non-compliant OS components (DLLs, etc.) and then check the regional settings to make the apps that refer to them aware. Oh, don't forget to back up all your important data as a precaution.

O d d O n e, who runs eight OSes on his software-development machine... And the whole box passed all Y2K compliance tests from BIOS and RTC to apps to utilitites.

-- OddOne (mocklamer_1999@yahoo.com), December 21, 1999.

This must be so because had a comp programer tell me this a month ago.

-- Curly~Q (Curly@Q.com), December 21, 1999.

You are correct that in MOST cases this needs to be set to a 4-digit year.

The exception will bite you. Programs that accept the date from the system may get it by retrieving the Windows-formatted text string containing the date. That means that when you change from a 2-digit year to 4-digit, the string being passed to the program is suddenly in a different format. If the developer had any sense, he/she tested this with all the different formats, or accepted the date through another means. But if you have idiotware, it will suddenly stop working when you change the date.

Go ahead and change it, just watch for this. If it bites you, you'll either have to change the format every time you execute the idiotware, or put the idiotware app on a separate machine where it can have the format it wants.

-- bw (home@puget.sound), December 21, 1999.

this is a hoax! http://www.microsoft.com/y2k/hoax/y2khoax.htm

eddy

-- eddy (eee@eee.eee), December 21, 1999.

MicroSoft says hoax:

http://www.microsoft.com/y2k/hoax/y2khoax.htm

Tank

-- tank (tank@micronet.net), December 21, 1999.

It is true that there has been an e-mail going aroung saying that all you have to do to fix windows is to change the date. That is the hoax. You still have to change the dates even with the updates. Be sure and change the long date and the short date. That is not a hoax.

-- b (nah@rathernot.com), December 21, 1999.