`I'm Sorry, Dave. I'm Afraid I Can't Do That' - preparing personal computers for Year 2000 transition

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Jan, 1999 by Mark Solheim, James Ramage

How to make sure your PC doesn't sass you on New Year's Day.

Come New Year's Day, 2000, I'd planned to barricade myself where the Y2K bug couldn't get me--in my house, in front of a roaring fire, with my family. With seasoned oak stacked high, we'd be able to generate our own heat and light in case the world succumbed to technological chaos and the power grid went kerflooey. We'd stay away from planes, tall buildings with elevators and ATMs.

The plan seemed fail-safe--until I learned that the Y2K bug could play havoc with a PC. What would I do if my computer turned on me like HAL did on Dave in 2001: A Space Odyssey? I track my finances on Quicken. I pay my bills electronically. I browse the Internet. I connect to the computer at work when I need to work from home. My kids play computer games, one of the few things in life they do together without arguing.

What really scared me is that my Compaq PC--a nearly state-of-the-art 486 (with 4 megabytes of RAM and a 14.4 modem) when I bought it in 1994--was made before companies started confronting the year 2000 problem.

What's the problem?

Basically, as I understand it, when the year 2000 arrives, my computer will interpret "00" as 1900 and freak out. Unless I fix the clock on my hardware, Windows 95/Plus won't recognize the correct date for two-digit shortcuts, either (Windows 98 and NT 4.0 will acknowledge the correct century). Fixing the clock is just the first step because software and data files may have their own problems.

For a more technical explanation, I visited ZDNet (www.zdnet.com/pcmag/special/y2k), which has a comprehensive overview of the situation, plus links to utilities that can detect and fix some of the problems. I learned that each time the computer is turned on, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is responsible for retrieving the time and date from a chip known as the real-time clock. The BIOS then passes the information to your operating system, which in turn sets its own software-based clock.

The hardware clock's century "register," unlike those for seconds, minutes and so on, is not updated automatically. So in "older" PCs (some of which were made as recently as a year ago), unless you make the BIOS smart enough to replace a "19" with a "20," you're stuck in the 20th century. (Actually, most will default to 1980, the earliest date recognized by most versions of Windows.)

From NSTL (www.nstl.com/html/ nstl_ymark2000.html), the testing organization that sets the standard for Y2K compliance, I download a utility called YMARK2000. It should tell me how seriously my computer is cursed and how hard it will be to exorcise the demons. Seconds after I run it, I get these messages:

* "Progression to year 2000 fails" (in flashing red letters);

* "21st century leap-year test passes" (I hadn't even considered that);

* "Manual transition to year 2000 supported" (there is hope!);

* "Do not use this system to run sensitive software that must run 24 hours a day, such as voice messaging or satellite tracking" (I'll cancel my contract with Lockheed Martin).

Next stop, the Compaq Web site (practically all hardware and software makers have a year 2000 section on their Web sites). Unfortunately, the Y2K information here reads as if it was written by a software engineer for whom English is a second language. Attempts to find a "ROM BIOS Upgrade" file for my model are unsuccessful.

But I do learn that fixing my BIOS problem may be as simple as clicking on the Date/Time icon in the Windows control panel and changing the year to 2000. (Warning: If you're worried about software licenses expiring, use the DOS boot disk detailed on ZDNet.)

I try it out and, sure enough, the year 2000 appears on a new memo I open in Microsoft Word. I change the date back and make a note on my Lotus Organizer for January 1, 2000, to manually fix the date. Oops. Better make that for December 31, 1999.

I consider myself lucky--some PCs not only can't roll over to 2000 on their own, but also need a BIOS fix to recognize any dates in the next century. Such fixes should be available from your hardware maker or, if you want to spend some dough, you can get an off-the-shelf utility program. Network Associates' 2000 ToolBox ($29.95; www.nai.com), for example, fixes time-clock and BIOS problems, scans data files for date problems and alerts you to them, and fixes two-digit date fields in data files.

Software snags

I'm not out of the woods yet, though. Utilities such as 2000 ToolBox can change two-digit years to four-digit ones within spreadsheet files (so you finish paying off the mortgage in 2025 rather than 1925), but they can't actually fix software.

The program I'm most concerned about is Quicken, which I use to track my entire financial life. According to Intuit's Web site (www.intuit.com), my version 6 recognizes two-digit years from "00" to "27" (for example, 1/1/00), as 2000 to 2027.

On the other hand, for online banking, Quicken 6 won't support dates later than 1999. That's bad. Intuit offers three solutions: purchase a new version of Quicken; the ever-so-helpful "check with your financial institution"; or wait until the end of the second quarter of 1999 for a "free solution." Guess that's why you need to fill out those annoying registration forms.