Wednesday, August 19, 1998

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most Personal Computers Will Be OK When New Millennium Rolls Around

  

  

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

    NEW YORK -- The question of whether the year 2000 glitch will affect personal computers at home or in the office can be answered with a frustrating ``maybe.''

    Desktop computers and laptops built after 1997 and used for simple tasks such as word processing likely will have no problems when the century rolls over. But older PCs, or those running complex applications, could be bitten by the millennium bug.

    Every computer has a built-in clock chip. A part of the computer called the BIOS (for Basic Input-Output System) accesses or updates the clock and is used whenever the operating system or other applications need a date calculation.

    Problems arise when the millennium rolls around. Depending on the make and model of the PC, the machine will think it is Jan. 1, 2000, or Jan. 1, 1900.

    Your checkbook program could be thrown out of whack, with checks written after Jan. 1, 2000, treated as if they were 100 years old. Computers also keep track of the date that files are created. If the date is off, the computer might erase the newest files when it goes through a hard-drive maintenance because it thinks the files have not been opened in a century.

    This is a problem primarily for people running a version of Microsoft Windows on a machine using Intel-style chips. Apple Macintosh computers, as their users often smugly point out, never had a problem computing dates past the millennium. However, this does not mean that every application for the Mac will function properly.

    How do you know if the machine that holds your checkbook is going to keep calculating dates correctly? First, set the computer clock to Dec. 31, 1999, 11:59 p.m. and wait. If the clock seems to roll over correctly, and everything seems to work fine, your BIOS is probably OK.

    Now shut off the computer and wait a few minutes. Turn it back on. Is the date still a few minutes after midnight, Jan. 1, 2000? Good, your clock chip is fine, too.