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From... Test your systems for Y2K
April 6, 1999 by James M. Connolly (IDG) -- "Good afternoon, this is the help desk." "Hi. I know it's Christmas Eve and everything, but, um, I have this PC at home and I tried one of those Y2K fix-it programs. And, um, I think it found a bunch of problems, but I don't know what to do now." Every help desk will get calls like that as 1999 winds down. I felt this way, too, when I tried a few programs designed to bring PCs and applications into compliance with year 2000 dates. The good news is that the packages are relatively easy to use, and by investing just a few hours and $30 to $50, you can get some assurance about your PC's Y2K readiness.
For example, you get a list of potential problems, noting which are most significant and which could crash your system. In my case, the only severe problems were in obscure templates in Microsoft Access or seldom-used applications. On the downside, I was left wondering about the 6 to 20 applications on my systems that each test program didn't recognize. Did the tools really did catch all of the problems? "You trust them like you do the government: You don't have a lot of options. But my gut instinct is that they're fairly trustworthy," says analyst Norbert Kriebel at Giga Information Group. Keep current for best resultsThe major programs work basically the same way. They check the system BIOS and system clocks using several key 2000 dates. Then they look at the applications and data files. The packages walked me through some slight tweaks to the settings in each of my systems -- a 233-MHz Pentium notebook and a 200-MHz Pentium desktop. Most then look for known flaws -- two-digit date fields -- in installed applications, files, and system software. The test packages draw on databases of problems identified by the vendors and updated online. But the databases could be a weak link in the chain, because they depend on software vendors posting their problems and fixes. Kriebel suggests users keep running the Y2K testing software against updated databases until the new year. Buyers should look for a vendor with a good track record, because most users are uncertain enough about Year 2000-compliance information, says Andrew Bochman, analyst with Aberdeen Group. He says he's steering clients toward Norton 2000. "Symantec is a company that has been around, and we advise people to look for companies that will be around after the first of the year," Bochman says. In fact, products from both Norton and McAfee are capable. McAfee's First Aid 2000 is cheaper, priced at $29.95 to Norton 2000's $49.95. But for tech support after 2000, stay clear of the third package, Palladium Interactive's Detect 2000. It's being discontinued.
McAfee finds troubleThe Norton and McAfee products do not significantly differ in ease of use. I give Norton a nod for clearly labeling the severity of found problems and for its links to vendor pages. McAfee does a better job of clustering problem reports by application name. However, McAfee got off on the wrong foot with me. It lets you select the tests you want to run, including a virus check. Each time I ran it, the virus check crashed the application, giving me Windows' infamous "blue screen of death." Both Norton and McAfee found multiple problems in Microsoft Access, particularly in the Northwind Traders sample templates. McAfee's reports offer a button to fix problems, though you're never quite sure what is being fixed in the background. In some cases, the "fix" is simply an advice box that tells you to use four-digit date fields. Gee, wish I'd thought of that. Avoid Detect 2000Heed the advice of Aberdeen Group's Andrew Bochman: Seek out vendors that will stand behind their testing products after January 1, 2000. The red box of Detect 2000 stood out on retail store shelves. The program has a nice, tab-style interface with a traffic-light warning system -- red light means bad; yellow, could be bad; green, good. Then I surfed the Net looking for more information on the product. Oops -- Palladium was acquired, and the new owner of Detect 2000, The Learning Company, is dropping it. Look for a bright-red stop light if you see it at a retailer. Norton is thorough, fastInstalling and testing with Norton 2000 took less than 30 minutes per machine. It performs a hardware check and examines system dates. It took only a couple of clicks to change a two-digit date setting to four digits with both Norton 2000 and Toolbox 2000. One flaw in Norton 2000 was that, after the preliminary system checks, I noticed the small type that said I needed to make a BIOS reboot test disk to do a more thorough hardware test. I missed that warning the first time I used the product. The reboot test took only 5 minutes, and tested the real-time clock against dates such as January 1, 2000, and key leap-year dates through 2015. Norton 2000 found some two-digit date fields in my applications and data. It rates problems on a "severity" scale, a rating of 5 being the most serious. You can drill down through a tree structure to get notes about the types of problems and Web page references for information or fixes provided by the original software vendors. The tough part is knowing what to do with the information; that's where the severity scale comes in handy. The most serious problems I spotted were in applications or data that I can either live without or expect to replace by the end of the year.
SPECIAL SECTION: Looking at the Y2K Bug RELATED STORIES: Important U.S. computer systems likely to miss Y2K deadline RELATED IDG.net STORIES: Microsoft releases Y2K tools RELATED SITES: Network Associates Inc.
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