We have Y2K diagnostics software FREE to download at our Y2K Site!!!

Visit the site today... www.oswestry.clara.net/tannery/y2k Or email us... y2k@oswestry.clara.net

-- Jon Stagg (y2k@oswestry.clara.net), October 16, 1998

Answers

More selected links on this topic: Y2K PC/BIOS Testing and Utilities

Y2K BIOS Testing - Utilities and Patches

http://www.mitre.org/research/cots/PATCH.html

Year 2000 Compliant PC Internal Clock and BIOS - How to Check

http://www.mitre.org/research/cots/COMPLIANT_BIOS.html

National Software Testing Labs YMark2000

http://www.nstl.com/html/nstl_y2k_main.html

PC Mag Year2000 Resource Center

http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/y2k/index.html

Testing Your PC Hardware Of 10,000 users who have already tested their PCs, 20 percent have found their PCs noncompliant.

http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/y2k/features/main/docs/348620.htm

Software Library: Y2K Utilities

http://www.zdnet.com/pcmag/pctech/download/swcol.y2k.html

IBM's guide to testing/fixing PC's for Y2K

http://www.pc.ibm.com/year2000/faq.html

-- Jon (jon@milesresearch.com), October 16, 1998.

I've never used this test software, but be sure to test the following: clock roll-over to 2000 / clock reset to 2000 and reboot / 2000 leap year recognition

For PC BIOS/RTC status I used Test 2000 from RighTime - it worked quite well for me. Another tester is Yes2K from Safetynet, Inc.

I tested every PC in our office for the combination of BIOS/RTC compliance. The machines are from various manufacturers, with a wide variety of motherboards and processors ranging from Pentium 75 to Pentium II 233. Of the approximately 75 PCs, about 1/3 are fully compliant, about 2/3 will require a clock reset, and two units are non-compliant. I'm hoping to upgrade the BIOS on the two bad ones. So far, the one which I tried to upgrade fixed the clock issue, but produced problems elsewhere. The other unit has only a beta upgrade available so far, so I'm waiting for a final release.

A newer BIOS does not mean the unit is going to pass. Some of the older machines tested fine, while one of the failures was a 1 1/2 year old Pentium 166 unit. Test results also varied between machines with the same BIOS version.

-- Mike (gartner@execpc.com), October 16, 1998.

OK, I know I'm acting like a teacher again, (sigh), but don't you want to help us make our computers compliant? (Ed, we need spell check on this forum!) :-)

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), October 18, 1998.