Microsoft Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure & Resource Center

Product Summary

Product: Windows 98 Version: 4.10.1998 Category: Compliant* Operating System: 32-Bit Win Language: Dutch Release Date: 25 Jun 1998 Operational Range: 01 Jan 1980 - 31 Dec 2035 Prerequisites: Windows 98 Year 2000 Updates; Updated Microsoft Virtual Machine; Outlook Express 4.01 software update Product Dependencies: None Clock Dependencies: PC BIOS Last Updated: 28 Sep 1999

Product Details

Windows 98 Product Maintenance: While Microsoft continues to recommend that customers install the most current Service Pack/Release for non-Year 2000 reasons, we understand that, for many reasons, this may not be possible. In order to aid our customersÆ Year 2000 efforts, Microsoft intends to maintain Windows 98 as compliant through January 1, 2001. Newer Service Packs are also to be maintained as compliant, and may include additional non-Year 2000 updates. This is intended to minimize the Year 2000 as a reason to upgrade.   INSTALLATION OF WINDOWS 98 YEAR 2000 UPDATES Windows 98 users: Please start the Windows Update service from the link on the Start menu. This will prompt you to install the appropriate year 2000 updates for your Windows 98 system.   All other users: For information on Windows 98, please go to the Windows 98 Web site. To download individual year 2000 updates for Windows 98, go to the Windows 98 Update for Corporate IT Managers. If you need to update a computer without Internet connectivity, you can order the Year 2000 Resource Center CD by calling 1-888-MSFT-Y2K or from the following Microsoft Web site: www.microsoft.com/year2000. RESOLVED PRODUCT ISSUES: Outlook Express Issue (Q234680/Q234681) If Outlook Express (OE) 4.01 (Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2) receives an IMAP mail message or a News message with a 2-digit year as the sent date, the date can be misinterpreted under certain conditions.  If the 2-digit year is anything other than "99", OE will assume the century value is the same as the current century.  If the current year is 2000, and a 2-digit date is received as "97", then the year will be interpreted as 2097.  However, there is one special case when different logic is applied.  If the 2-digit year "99" is received and the current year is a multiple of 100 (e.g. 2000), the year will be interpreted as the current year plus 98 (e.g. 2098).  A software update is available for this issue. There is a separate update if you are running Outlook Express 4.01 SP1 or Outlook Express 4.01 SP2. The software update is found here. Issues resolved with Year 2000 Update #2 (released July 1999) OLE Automation: The Microsoft Automation library contains routines for interpreting 2-digit years and provides a convenient way for applications to create unambiguous (serial) dates. In Windows 98 the current 2-digit year cutoff is 2029. This means that 2-digit years beginning with 30 will be interpreted as being in the 1900s, i.e. 1/1/30 is converted to 1/1/1930, irrespective of the userÆs century window settings in Control Panel\Regional Settings\Date tab. DOS Xcopy For systems using the International date format "yy-mm-dd" 2-digit years are not handled correctly. When a system is configured to use the date format "yy-mm-dd" in Control Panel \ Regional Settings, xcopy will not accept 00 for the year 2000. MQRT.DLL (Q230050) Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) is installed as part of Personal Web Server and works with two types of digital certificates û external and internal. Internal certificates is a concept supported by MSMQ to allow MSMQ applications to allocate certificates for the purpose of sending authenticated messages. The code creating the requests for internal certificates for MSMQ 1.0 requests to set the validity of the newly created certificates to 10 years. The problem materializes when MSMQ tries to create such a certificate on February 29, 2000 (or any leap year such as 2004, 2008, etc.). This fails because it computes the validity by adding 10 years to the current date, which yields 2/29/2010. This is an illegal date because 2010 is not a leap year.   Previously Resolved Issues (Year 2000 update released December 1998) Microsoft identified and updated the following issues found in Windows 98 with the existing Windows 98 Year 2000 update. MICROSOFT VIRTUAL MACHINE Year 2000 issues have been reported in connection with Microsoft virtual machines based on the Sun Microsystems Java Development Kit (versions 1.1.1-1.1.5). Applications written in Java that make use of the java.txt.SimpleDateFormat class library may parse 4-digit dates incorrectly. Note: The Microsoft Virtual Machine Version 2405 (2424) that ships with Windows 98 Gold and the Windows 98 Y2K Update has year 2000 date related issue(s). Please refer to the Microsoft Virtual Machine Year 2000 Product Guide for details and recommendations to address issues. MSWALLET - When entering credit card information in versions of Microsoft Wallet before 2.1.1383, the user must enter month, day, and year for expiration dates beyond 2000. Otherwise, some information may be parsed incorrectly. For example, entering a credit card with expiration 5/01 will be parsed as May 1 of the current year. DIALER.EXE - Phone Dialer applet. The view call log option doesn't display date as expected after successful completion of telephone call. If date is adjusted to the year 2000, the date will display as 100, 101, 102, etc. COMCTL32.DLL - When Regional Settings from Control Panel is set to use 2 digits for years, the Date/Time Picker function may not return the proper date. To ensure proper handling of dates, set Regional Settings to 4-digit date handling. TIMEDATE.CPL -Time and Date control applet - When the date is set to February 29 the applet will display the 29th day on years other than leap years when using the tumblers to scroll the year ahead or back. DOCPROP.DLL - When viewing the properties of Microsoft Wordpad or Word documents and setting custom date information, the year 2000 will not be accepted as a valid entry when entered as "00". Two-digit dates are assumed to be in the 1900s and if the time zone is set to Far East, the date properties will lose a day when the user enters the year as 2000. IO.SYS - If the system is booted at a precise point when the RTC (Real Time Clock) date rolls over at midnight, the system clock may display an inaccurate time/date. Rebooting the computer corrects this problem. MSDADC.DLL - OLE DB year 2000 issues for data coercion library are: If coding to ADO, AND the ADO Recordset includes Date data types, such as: adDate, adDBDate, adFileTime, or adDBTimeStamp. AND a date format in which periods are used instead of slashes for date separator (01.01.98 instead of 01/01/98) AND the specified year is less than 60, THEN Data Convert (msdadc.dll) may translate the date as a time. For example, 01.01.01 (January 1, 2001) could be converted to 01:01:01 (December 30, 1899, 1:01:01 a.m.). If coding directly to OLE DB, the same case exists: If the user is converting from a variant (BSTR, VARIANT or PROPVARIANT) to date datatypes, such as: DBTYPE_DATE DBTYPE_DBDATE DBTYPE_DBTIME DBTYPE_FILETIME DBTYPE_DBTIMESTAMP AND a date format in which periods are used instead of slashes for date separator (01.01.98 instead of 01/01/98), AND the specified year less than 60, THEN Data Convert (msdadc.dll) may translate the date as a time. For example, 01.01.01 (January 1, 2001) could be converted to 01:01:01 (December 30, 1899, 1:01:01 a.m.). VDHCP.386 - Winipcfg /all - IP Leases obtained on or after 3/01/2000 are reported as having been obtained the previous day. The system date is displayed correctly but the DHCP client reports an incorrect date. XCOPY32.MOD û When using xcopy in real mode with the optional parameter /D:date, xcopy does not accept years entered as 2 digits except for the years 80 û 99. The message "Invalid date" is displayed. When using xcopy in protected mode (from within Windows) 2-digit dates are accepted but are recognized as being within the 1900s (02/05/01 is seen as 02/05/1901). MFC40.DLL û Performing a File\Save after the year 1999 creates a .nfo file with a date stamp that displays the year incorrectly (01/01/2000 displays as 01/01/100). Common Date Usage Errors: JScript Date.getYear() & Date.setYear() methods The JSCRIPT method .getYear() returns a 2-digit string for years within the operational range up to 1999. The method returns a 4-digit string for years within the operational range from 2000. Web authors can use the method .getFullYear(), which returns 4-digit dates. For more information please check out the Microsoft Developer Network article. INTL.CPL. For International versions of Windows 98 where a user can choose between localized and non-localized Gregorian system calendars (in Control Panel/Regional Settings), the century window can be configured individually for each Gregorian calendar. An error occurs when applications that use Visual Basic, such as Access, convert a date that utilizes the century window settings for the default calendar, while a user would expect instead that the currently selected calendar and settings would be used. This does not affect English versions of Windows 98. This is an issue with customizable date setting that a user should be aware of, and not a year 2000 issue. This issue can be worked around and resolved in the following manner: If you change the century window setting in Control Panel\Regional Settings for one Gregorian calendar, change all other Gregorian calendars to the same century window. For example, when changing one calendar century window from 1930-2029 to 1936-2035, change all other Gregorian calendar century windows to the same date range. How the product handles dates: Storage: Dates are stored internally as 4-digit dates. MS-DOS file system APIs are an exception. MS-DOS╥ file system APIs use a year offset from 1980 to store dates. When a program gets a date from an MS-DOS╥ API the program must add 1980. Two-digit shortcut handling: MS-DOS╥ DATE command accepts dates in both 2-digit and 4-digit formats. If the user enters a 2-digit value less than 80, the Date command assumes it to be 20XX. Also, the MS-DOS╥ file system APIs return a year offset from 1980. The programmer has to add 1980 to the date value returned to get the appropriate date. Win32 APIs are not affected by this. Explorer (EXPLORER.EXE) by default displays 2-digit dates to provide application compatibility for older programs. To view 4-digit dates, select 4-digit dates in Control Panel, Regional Settings. Testing guidelines and recommendations: Microsoft Jet Database Engine 3.5 and Microsoft Office 97 When users try to synchronize two members of a replica set that was created before the year 2000, and the current date on the computer is after the year 2000, a synchronization message might appear. This is because of how the expression service mishandles date entries in the MSysExchangeLog table in replicas. When a replica set created before the year 2000 is compacted after the year 2000, exchange information relating to synchronizations after the year 2000 is deleted from the MSysExchangeLog table. After this information is deleted, the generation information in the MSysExchangeLog table and the MSysGenHistory table do not match, and the replicas cannot be synchronized. To resolve this issue, download the latest Microsoft Office 97 Service Release from the Microsoft Web site at http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/ Some PCs reset the system date to 1980 or other invalid dates when the computer reaches the year 2000. This problem is created by flaws in the computer hardware and in low-level BIOS software provided by other vendors. If users are going to test for this, Microsoft recommends executing the tests on a "test-bed" machine rather than a production machine. Please see the article Windows Operating System Interactions with BIOS and Real Time Clock in the white paper section for further information.

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ANY MICROSOFT YEAR 2000 STATEMENTS MADE TO YOU IN THE COURSE OF PROVIDING YEAR 2000 RELATED UPDATES, YEAR 2000 DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS, OR REMEDIATION SERVICES (IF ANY) ARE SUBJECT TO THE YEAR 2000 INFORMATION AND READINESS DISCLOSURE ACT (112 STAT. 2386). IN CASE OF A DISPUTE, THIS ACT MAY REDUCE YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS REGARDING THE USE OF ANY SUCH STATEMENTS, UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED BY YOUR CONTRACT OR TARIFF.

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