The Biggest Y2K Problem Might Be PCs, Not ‘Big Iron’
As companies race to fix computers to correctly handle dates in 2000, personal computers are threatening to eclipse mainframes as the biggest headache in the war to eradicate the millennium bug.
Although Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates proclaimed as recently as last year that “PCs are in good shape” for 2000, a growing number of experts say most personal computers--especially the more than 90 million computers still running Microsoft’s Windows version 3.1 software or DOS--have serious year 2000 flaws.
A review in the July issue of Byte magazine, for example, found minor to significant flaws in all versions of Microsoft’s Windows PC operating systems, some versions of Novell Corp.’s Netware and Dr. DOS and IBM Corp.’s PC DOS.
And Dell Computer Corp., one of the world’s largest sellers of personal computers, acknowledges that software in a key microchip on Dell PC circuit boards purchased before 1997 won’t properly handle dates after Dec. 31, 1999, unless the AYchip--called a “BIOS”--is modified. The same problem plagues hundreds of millions of PCs produced by other manufacturers.
The so-called year 2000 computer bug relates to the six-digit shorthand most computers use to express the month, day and year of an event. While the mm/dd/yy formula is simple and economical, the downside is that using only two digits for the year leaves 1900 indistinguishable from 2000.
Software interacting with a computer’s BIOS--an acronym for a computer’s basic input-output system--can erroneously interpret the glitch in a number of ways. In the case of MS-DOS and old versions of Windows, Jan. 1, 2000, will be interpreted as Jan. 1, 1980, for example. Other software programs might revert to the year 1900 or refuse to operate altogether.
Experts say the calendar mistakes can potentially result in miscalculation of mortgage rates, rejection of valid credit card purchases and the creation of erroneous spreadsheets that stockbrokers and others rely on to trade billions of dollars worth of shares. Yet few PC users seem to be aware of the potential for disaster.
Big corporations have taken the lead attacking the year 2000 bug. But they’ve mostly concentrated on their so-called big iron--the mainframe computers running Cobol and other workhorse business software. Little attention has been paid to PCs, for the most part.
“There is the impression that PCs are way down the food chain” as far as being a year 2000 priority, said Karl Feilder, chief executive of software developer Greenwich Mean Time and PC program coordinator of the British government’s year 2000 task force. But Feilder noted that when the 1,000 largest U.S. companies were asked what type of equipment they were using to run their most important business tasks, 64% said personal computers and just 8% said mainframes.
Some experts, of course, say the doomsday talk generated by the year 2000 computer glitch is more fanciful than real. Planes won’t fall out of the sky, they say, nor will electrical blackouts engulf the world in darkness.
But industry executives are beginning to admit that they were late to address the real year 2000 problems that do exist for personal computer users.
In 1996, Microsoft set up a Web site devoted to year 2000 issues and began testing its estimated 8,500 software products. But it wasn’t until April 15 of this year that the company released initial testing results on a small fraction of its products, declaring 55 programs year 2000 compliant or “compliant with minor issues.”
“We were late in delivering the depth of information that our customers needed,” acknowledged Jason Matuso, Microsoft’s year 2000 strategy manager. “We’ve now made sure our customers understand that we are taking the problem seriously from the top down.”
The about-face has left organizations from brokerage houses to the federal government to private law firms scrambling to upgrade or fix tens of millions of PCs.
Dan Kusnetzky, program director for Boston-based research firm International Data Corp., predicted that the PC housecleaning could produce a kind of perverse financial bonanza for an industry that only recently began to address the year 2000 issue.
Orem, Utah-based software developer Caldera Inc. and IBM, for instance, have capitalized on the bug by updating and proclaiming their venerable DOS software products year 2000 compliant. The two companies, however, also offer free year 2000 fixes for many of their software products.
Microsoft, which has a staff of more than 100 people trying to fix year 2000 glitches in the company’s software, has also been offering free upgrades to users.
Microsoft’s Matuso and a Novell executive disputed the year 2000 findings of Byte magazine and contend that their most up-to-date software products contain only minor bugs. Matuso added that any remaining glitches in Microsoft operating systems will be fixed well before Jan. 1, 2000.
Matuso said the bugs found by Byte stem mostly from old computer BIOS chips, which are beyond the control of the software maker to correct since the chips are made by hardware manufacturers. He said, however, that Windows 98 and updated versions of Windows NT have a software patch that corrects erroneous BIOS chips in 70% of today’s computers.
But Michael Stanko, director of information systems for Los Angeles-based law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, said he has become nervous that even modern and robust software operating systems such as Windows 98 and Windows NT don’t offer a completely safe harbor from year 2000 problems.
He said computer networks managed by Windows NT could be vulnerable to attacks by hackers or have their computer-file maintenance routines disrupted on Feb. 29, 2000, because the operating software doesn’t recognize 2000 as a leap year.
Times staff writer Jube Shiver Jr. can be reached via e-mail at jube.shiver@latimes.com.
