I am fairly new to computers and I am attending Star Technical Institute to obtain my diploma in micro computer opperations specilalist. I have just purchased my pc from sears in October 1998 and the more I learn about the Y2K the more I wonder how my home pc will be affected , if at all. Could you please answer that question for me?

thank oyu . Marisa

-- Marisa kreite (delaie@aol.com), December 30, 1998

Answers

he do a home test its easy,

first/ go to your pc and turn it on

second/ go to your breaker box and open the door

three/ pull the braker to your house

four/ go back to your pc

five/ type deltaV345@wes.fud

six/ look at the screen and if you see nothing your pc has failed the y2k test

-- Ron (mongo@earthling.net), December 30, 1998.

Marisa, I'd suggest you find out for yourself. Link to

http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html

read some very good stuff about Y2k and PCs, and test your computer.

-- rocky (rknolls@hotmail.com), December 30, 1998.

Marisa,

No matter what kind of Y2K test you want to run, or what anyone else tells you,

Do not set your computer's clock forward or run any other Y2K test until you have a complete backup of all your software and data AND you have already practiced restoring all your software and data from that backup.

It is sad to see that so many lists of steps for Y2K testing do not put the above step at the very beginning.

A list that does not put such a precaution first was probably authored either by someone with little computer experience, or by someone who has forgotten that the readers will include many inexperienced computer users who have not acquired the habit of making backups or ever practiced restoring their entire system from a backup.

Think about the possible consequences of Y2K bugs. If one or more of them occur during your testing and change your data or disable your software, how will you recover?

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), December 30, 1998.

Oh yes,

Also remember that Y2K problems that corrupt your data or programs might not be obvious right away.

Suppose a Y2K bug makes a small but incorrect change to one out of every 100 of your data records -- how will you detect this?

How will you ensure that this error does not remain after your Y2K testing is over? (You _did_ make that backup, didn't you, and you _have_ actually restored your system from backup at least once before you _had to_, haven't you?)

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), December 30, 1998.

Check out www.rightime.com . They have a free patch called year2000.zip (you'll need an unzipper, it's a compressed file format) that can fix many PC's BIOS (Basic Input Output System) problems. Won't do a bit to fix your applications or databases, however.

-- YourFullName (email@ddress.com), December 30, 1998.