by Al Anderson (Publisher of The y2k Files)

Do you have visions of some "creepy, crawly things" currying around inside your computer? Some techno bug that bumps a resistor here, shorts a memory chip there, eats data off your hard drive, tells lies to your software and leaves "droppings" in your BIOS? Maybe you shouldn't go and tell your friends (or your doctor) about this, but you are not far off from the truth.

The y2k bug and its fix is the biggest technical challenge of this end of the century. In terms of resources, both human and monetary, it is bigger than the space program. So it seems hard to believe that the cause of all this stems from early computer programmers' failure to identify the year as a 4-digit number. In the interest of saving a couple of bytes of memory, they programmed computers to accept a 2-digit value for the year and gave them the power to infer what century it is. The catch is, programmers never told the computer about the 21st century (year 2000 and beyond).

Oooops! I hear some Mac users out there. OK, OK... you got it right on this one. The good news for Mac users is that your hardware and operating system is y2k compliant - meaning your computers understand the year 2000 but be careful later in the century. The not-so-good news is that you may still have software and application problems. I will address this in a future newsletter.

Back to the PC. Quite simply then, your computer will most likely have a problem recognizing the year 2000 (yes, even those newer models are likely to have a problem). Now, rest assured your computer will not explode or melt down. In fact, you may not even notice a problem until such time as you run a piece of software or application that requests the current date from your system. Then... watch out! This simple query may have results ranging from "locking up" your system to telling you that your bank balance is currently -(minus) $2,478.00. Hmm..mm, this is not good.

Here is the explanation (techno phobes - close your eyes). The date and time is maintained by a piece of hardware in your computer called the CMOS RTC (RTC stands for real time clock). The RTC is battery driven and keeps the time and date (as a 2-digit number) even when the system is off. When your system boots up, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) always asks the RTC what time and date it is. It does that so it can provide the same to your operating system. The operating system in turn provides this info to your many software applications that are time and date dependent like your banking balance application for instance.

Here's the y2k bug in action: On 01-01-2000 you boot up your system. The BIOS asks the RTC, "What date is it?" The RTC responds with "00." The BIOS has no knowledge of the year 2000 and so infers the century digits to be "19" and the year to be 1900. But that causes another glitch because there is no record of the year 1900 so the BIOS says, "Oh no it's not - it must be January 4, 1980" (because that is the earliest date that programmers told the BIOS about). The BIOS is happy and your system is chugging along until you hear news about a "run on the banks" so you decide to check your bank balances. Oh! Oh! The BIOS tells our application that it is January 4, 1980. Now we really don't know what this will do to your specific system until it is tested but it may lock it up or it may result in your application giving that negative bank balance I mentioned before. Either way, it's a problem. Sorry about that - but you're not alone by any means.

Now that you understand the problem, watch for future info in my newsletter to include topics such as "Testing," "The Hardware Fix" and "What Survivalists are Saying." I should mention a couple things about testing. There is a lot of misinformation (some from usually reliable sources) floating around on the Internet about testing your system and changing the date in your BIOS. **DO NOT DO IT** - until you have the facts. Changing the date now in your BIOS could cause you more problems than the bug itself. I'll tell you why in a future issue.

Al Anderson is a computer consultant for Y2K EasyFix and Publisher of a free weekly e-zine, "The y2k Files." Y2K EasyFix has one of the top selling Y2K compliance packages available as an E-Book for individuals and small businesses.

For More Information, visit:

http://www.y2kEasyFix.com/