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Microsoft reports some Y2K problems, rest of US is quiet

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CIOL Bureau
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Microsoft, which spent $50-100 million on fixing Y2K problems with its

software, announced it is working to overcome two unexpected Y2K problems.

Elsewhere in Silicon Valley and around the United States experienced few Y2K

problems and the government all but shut down its Y2K command center.

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At Oracle, one high-level customer service manager on duty during the

roll-over, said his group spend much of the night "watching the paint

dry," as few if any Y2K problems were reported by Oracles customers around

the world. The same slow conditions were reported at Hewlett-Packard, Cisco,

Intel and other major high-tech companies in the Valley where thousands of

workers were on duty in anticipation of customer problems.

The first of Microsoft’s Y2K problems affects software for viewing Web

pages and causes Microsoft's Internet Explorer software to display the date as

3900 on Web pages using outdated commands scripted in some programs. Internet

explorer’s "Get Year'' command only returns a two-digit date so Web pages

that use that command will display the wrong date, The Internet Explorer problem

doesn't occur with the Netscape Communicator browser because Netscape developed

a fix. Microsoft chose not to update its software and instead asked Web site

operators and programmers t make sure they use a newer command that works

with 4-digit dates. To fix th problem requires going through the programming

code that was used to creat Web sites and change all the old commands to the

newer "Get Full Year' command

The other problem is causing a date error in some HotMail e-mail message

HotMail, Microsoft's free e-mail service, may list dates of messages sen during

or before October 1999 with the year 2099 Bill Gates has previously said he

expects users of older computers t experience minor problems in the weeks ahead

Overall, the Y2K transition has not caused significant problems in Microsoft’s

vast installed software OS and application customer base. "It' been a

fairly quiet transition,'' said Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn Meanwhile, the

Clinton administratiod declared it had "squashed" the Yea 2000

computer bug. "We can safely say what has been referred to as the Y2 bug

has been squashed with regard to the key infrastructure systems it th United

States. We are likely to continue to see glitches pop up here an there in the

coming days and weeks," said John Koskinen, the U.S government’s top Y2K

troubleshooter

One of the few Y2K glitches involved a defense reconnaissance sp satellite,

which initially failed after the date roll-ver. By by Monday, th Pentagon had

regained full control of the machines and said the system wa functioning within

normalarameters. Koskinen was in charge of the $50 million Y2K command post that

watched over the federal government's 6,175 most important systems, the chief

object of a $8.38 billion Y2K upgrade.

Koskinen said that effective January 4, instead of around-the-clock staffing

at the "Information Coordination Center," the facility will be run by

a day shift only. And a slimmed-down core staff of about 30, down from 400 shift

workers, will stay on until the end of the month. The command center will return

to full staffing on February 29, a once-in-400 years type of leap day that may

confuse some computers. Just 1 per cent of 707 adults quizzed in the United

States Sunday reported having had a 2000-related computer problem.

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