Technicians flooded by PC owner calls

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Published Monday, January 3, 2000

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Folks who found their personal computers were not immune to Y2K annoyances are keeping Robert Stephens and his Geek Squad crew busy.

Stephens, the Geek Squad' s chief inspector, said people were lined up outside the Minneapolis office Sunday morning, and more were calling to get technical help for glitches.

Stephens said no one was reporting " fatal" problems, but technicians took their share of calls about smaller problems.

" We' re going to find bugs that we never even thought of, " Stephens said. " But they' ll be really tiny ones."

They were still busy this morning on the first regular work day of 2000, he said. He said his technicians mostly were helping people over the phone, talking them through the simple procedure of how to manually reset the date on their computers.

But Stephens said the Geek Squad had not encountered any major problems specifically related to Y2K.

" Computers are crashing all the time, " he said. " So a lot of them today are wondering if it' s Y2K related."

The Geek Squad' s on-call technicians respond to problems with personal computers and servers at home and at small- and medium-sized businesses.

Unlike government and most businesses that spent millions of dollars to avoid Y2K problems, some ordinary folks decided to wait it out and hope for the best.

One Minneapolis pub owner, whom Stephens didn' t name, frantically searched for a solution to problems with her cash register software. He told her she could reset the date on the computer to 1972, which matches up with the 2000 calendar in terms of days of the week and leap year.

But Stephens strongly advised her against that option because it could disrupt other functions, like electronic ledgers. She did it anyway, and it worked.

" Here in this modern age we would set the clock back to pre-bell-bottom era to fix a 2000 computer problem. It just cracks me up, " Stephens said.

Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

) Copyright 2000. All rights reserved.

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), January 03, 2000

Answers

Link

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), January 03, 2000.

I suck at HTML

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), January 03, 2000.

My bud works for Gateway as a phone tech. He was on duty during the rollover, as was most of his co-workers who were called in for extra help. He usually takes 30 or so calls per night, but on this night he took seven! Seven calls, none of which were Y2K related but mostly human errors (as usual).

-- Geoff (paullee@toldyaso.net), January 03, 2000.

"He told her she could reset the date on the computer to 1972, which matches up with the 2000 calendar in terms of days of the week and leap year.

But Stephens strongly advised her against that option because it could disrupt other functions, like electronic ledgers. She did it anyway, and it worked."

thought PCs only could be set back to 1980?

-- (4@5.6), January 04, 2000.