Microsoft confirmed Friday the
existence of the first known Windows 98 bug.
The bug appears when the Windows 98 operating system is rebooted at a time between 23:59 and 00:00, causing Windows to either leap forward two days or fall behind a day, depending on when the computer is rebooted. Although Microsoft originally claimed the problem could only occur on
December 31, the company confirmed today that the problem can actually
occur on any day of the year. That is, if the computer is rebooted during
that small window of time on any day, the computer's calendar will be
thrown off.
The problem can be alleviated by manually resetting the date function on
the task bar, but Microsoft will be making a fix available via the Windows
Update site, said Windows group product manager Kim Akers.
The bug was discovered in England by Year 2000 compliance firm Prove It 2000. But Microsoft is stressing that
the problem is not Year 2000 related. However, the bug could cause problems
for Windows 98 computers running financial applications or other
date-reliant software applications.
"Even though we haven't seen any customers that
have experienced this problem, we will be providing a fix," Akers said, in addition to the "really simple work-around."
Akers added that "it's really important to remember that it's not a Year 2000 issue; Windows
98 is Y2K compliant," Akers said. "In order to experience this, you have to be booting your machine in the
exact fraction of a second when the machine is rolling the date over, and
that fraction of a second varies from machine to machine."
"It took us four days of tests to reproduce the problem," David Weeks, Microsoft UK's Windows
98 product manager, said.
Although Microsoft estimates that this particular bug is only of concern
to one in 6 million Windows 98 users, industry analysts argue that because
Microsoft's products are on so many desktops, even very rare bugs are
important to publicize.
"When you hold the vast majority of desktops, people treat you like a
utility," said Dataquest analyst
Chris Letocq. "You're held to a higher standard. People expect it to work."
Launched on June 25, Windows 98 has already come under fire because of problematic
upgrade experiences on older machines, and rumors of an imminent update
with bug fixes have been rampant. Microsoft recently confirmed that an
upcoming multimedia update was originally planned as a service pack.
Despite these issues, this is the first actual bug specific to Windows 98
code, Akers said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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