A couple of months ago, when news reports indicated that PCs could be affected, computer manufacturers and software vendors alike claimed their wares were Y2K compliant. But when Microsoft stated that their Windows '98 is not Y2K compliant since it could not read the leap year February 29 in 2000, the myth was shattered. "None of the desktop solutions is Y2K compliant," emphasises Year 2000 Consultants Ltd chairman Andy Felton, who was on a visit to India recently.

Felton cites the case of Telemagic, which initially claimed to be compliant and was later discovered to have bugs in some files. Another example was Windows '98, which the company has sought to rectify through a patch that can be downloaded from the Net.

But how serious is the problem with PCs? Felton attributes the issue to heavy 16-bit and more softwares running on PCs. Hedivides the compliance into fully compliant, partially compliant and non-compliant. "When your PC is fully compliant, real-time clock (RTC), BIOS and CMOS, both set up utilities, will automatically roll over to January 1. BIOS will roll over to 2000 but not RTC in partially compliant. You can take it by rebooting it," he said. During these few seconds of rollover, you can lose precious data, he warns.

"Don't ignore the issue. One way or other it can affect you," he says hinting at hubs, routers and switches, which can be non-Y2K compliant.

Even if the hardware and application are compliant, user data files can play havoc with the system. If the field definition or variable in the data file has only two digits, then even a compliant application can have problems processing or writing to this file. There is therefore a need to scan all the data files and expand the two digits.

But how can one make sure that a PC is fully compliant? "No way, just go on testing at least till March 2000. By then you shouldknow whether it has successfully negotiated the situation," Felton says.

A recent reports from US says that on January 1, 2000, every one travelling by airlines will have no problem in getting their tickets but may not get a pizza since the caterer is not expected to be compliant.

The world over, companies are being told by their governments to be Y2K compliant. "Britain will be compliant," Felton hopes as the country has set up a crack team called Bug Busters to ensure compliance. The Dutch government has replaced a huge number of computers with Y2K compliant ones. "The awareness in some countries is quite low. I receive a lot of mail everyday from all parts of the world but all these years got only one from Japan," says Felton. Japan is unlikely to be hit hard by the millennium bug since it uses both the imperial dates, which are two digits, and western together.