Okay, I know that the alternate date that reflects the same days as 2000 is 1972. My husband wants to roll back our date on Dec. 30 to 1971 so no glitches occur on 1972/2000. Seems to me that I read where this is no guarantee of success using this method. I just can't remember why.

Does anybody have an answer for my hubby so we can get this thing moving. Nancy's post has me concerned as we have done no remediation at this point and we have all been ill.....sheesh....timing is everything.

I believed my compliance check up until last week when I posted what I was using and found out it wasn't adequate.

Thanks.

-- Ynott (Ynott@incorruptible.com), December 24, 1999

Answers

No PC bios will recognize a date before Jan 1, 1980. The 1972 thing was about mainframes. It is Dec 24, 1999. What have you been doing the last year? DId you ever change the oil in your car in the past 12 mo? Perhaps your tardiness re your computer says volumes about your concern about y2k.

-- gary elliott (gelliott@real.on.ca), December 24, 1999.

I think you may have a problem in that 1971 dates do not match 1999 dates.Just my opinion

-- X (just@my.opinion), December 24, 1999.

Ynott; What do you do with your computer that the date matters? Do you have accounting or payroll or a device controller on a critical device. What I mean is, if you could set it back a month without having problems, why worry about the date on your PC? If on the otherhand you are running a personal business or personal finance and accounting package, you might have to worry.

-- (...@.......), December 24, 1999.

I guess you can't read Gary. I ran a diagnostic on it which was supposed to check the Y2K compliance. I've been running said diagnostic for about 6 months. It was recommended by computer "experts" that I know. It said I was good to go. I grew more and more concerned and asked on this forum about that "checking device" and they informed me last week that it was NOT good to go. My husband is the more knowledgeable one about computers in this household and I relied on his judgment. I guess you never made a mistake like that. Don't ever go under the knife, Gary, you must rely on somebody else's expertise! Try the Home Surgery network...more to your style I am sure. Sorry to be so fallible. Sheesh....

So, we can't roll it back to 1972...okay...I have friends rolling it back to 1998...will that work?

No I don't run any personal business functions. I am more concerned that the basic Win98 program will fail to function properly. I am sorry that I am so unknowledgeable about this. But then, I thought that was why we came to this forum. Gee, could I be mistaken?

Oh and Gary, I do the routine maintenance on the cars as I am more knowledgeable in THAT area.

-- Ynott (Ynott@incorruptible.com), December 24, 1999.

Hanford cannot become compliant this year so
as a contingency they will set their systems
to 1972 to be "Y2K Ready". IMO this is one of
the few items in the Y2K movie that was based
on reality.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), December 24, 1999.

Gary called it right first. No Dos based system can pre-date the bios date (1980 with most BIOS). If you go to the Prompt and type in DATE: [enter]1979 you will get an invalid date error. Pre-dating is not a valid fix, nor is windowing (for a software fix, you will just get caught later). You need to flash your BIOS if possible (download the flash from the manufacturer and follow the directions).IF there is no fix you need to contact the company for a new BIOS chip. There are some free fixes on line that do TSR (AUTOEXEC.BAT OR Config.sys) fixes but this is problematic because sometimes these fixes disapear during an install of new programs.

-- Polly-Morphic DOOMER (greenem31@aol.com), December 24, 1999.

Try rolling your calendar to to 2027 BEFORE Jan 1. 2027 is the same calendar as 1999 and 2028 is the same as 2000. This is what my power company is doing with embedded processors in their power generation plants.

If your BIOS won't allow this, then you'll have to pick a year between 1980 and 2000. 1980 is OK if you don't care about the day of the week.

But you may have problems with your applications if for example they have liscences which expire or you are needing to use an existing data base which is date sensitive, maybe some accounting package like Quicken.

Mikey2k

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), December 24, 1999.

There's good news and bad news here. The good news is that rolling back to 1972 will work properly for some systems. The bad news is, the systems for which such an expedient is effective are very rare. PCs and mainframes don't qualify. This technique only applies to systems that only care about the day of the week for their primary function, but use the year for a secondary function that might cause trouble. A possible example is a traffic light system that only uses the year for logging. People can translate the year, and you don't want the logging errors to lock up the system so the lights don't work.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), December 24, 1999.