Millennium bug hunt uncovers Windows 98 quirk

Bug will affect "small number of users"

Software designed by Prove It 2000 to test for Millennium compliance has picked up an entirely different date-related bug in the Windows 98 operating system. Both companies are keen to stress that the bug will affect a very small number of users, and Prove It 2000 has emphasised that it is working alongside Microsoft. The window of opportunity for bug infection is very small. If a computer is booted at in a given second before midnight, which one varies from computer to computer, Windows 98 will skip two days forward or one day back, possibly resulting in some data loss. Prove It 2000 declined to comment on the probability that a user would be affected - it is still working on the figures - beyond saying it was very unlikely. However, informed sources said that as many as one in a hundred users could be affected by the bug. No one at Microsoft was available to comment. The software giant reckons the bug is easy to fix, and that it will have a patch for the problem on its web site within a few days. Prove It 2000 is the same company that lodged a complaint with the advertising standards authority about Compaq’s claims of compliance for Y2K. Prove It has eight different tests for compliance in its range of software and alleged that Compaq’s test was inadequate as it did not include a test on the Real Time Clock (RTC).