Did the Y2K Bug Actually Cause Any Problems?
The Y2K bug did actually cause many problems in the United States and aroundthe world. These problems weren't as widespread as many people expectedthem to be, but there were enough of them to make us realize that the Y2K bugwas a real problem. The most common problems which arose immediately inthe United States were very inconsequential for all but a small portion of thepopulation. The majority of the problems related to the Y2K bug didn'toccur as the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999, but in the followingdays. Below is a list of some of the bugs which were reported. Anation by nation list compiled by the International Y2K Cooperation Center isavailable at can be reached by clicking this link: IY2CCList of Bugs
Education
A survey of 51 school districts across the United States indicated that veryfew problems arose resulting from the millennium bug. One districtreported that some water heaters had to be turned on manually. Anotherreported that computers were displaying incorrect dates on the screen. Themost significant bug reported was that one district had a problem with studentservices involving a very old computer. This bug forced the district touse the back up system, which, luckily, was operational, causing no disruptionof service.
Federal Operations
The Federal Housing Administration reported minor Y2K related problems inthree "mission-critical" systems. Two of these systems -- theElectronic Data Interchange (EDI), and Comprehensive Servicing and MonitoringSystem (CSMS) -- experienced problems which caused incorrect dates to appear onreports. These errors did not affect any other content of the reportshowever, so the bug was minor. The third system which experienced problemswas the Single Family Insurance System (SFIS). This error prevented usersfrom terminating FDHA mortgages. The results of these bugs were for themost part insignificant, and all were corrected promptly.
United States spy satellites transmitted unreadable data for three crucialdays. The bug was caused by a patch which was supposed to fix a Y2K bug,but caused the satellites to mangle data transmissions back to Earth. Thecomplications came at an uneasy time, as there were serious fears of terroristattacks in the first few days of the millennium. These satellites are usedin prevention of terrorism. Article,Article,Article
The Department of Housing and Urban Development experienced a bug with itsTenant Rental Assistance Certification System. New records entered intothe system had a default date of '01/01'19:0,' instead of '01/01/2000.'
Financial Sector
The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago experienced Y2K related problems intransferring $700,000 in tax payments. The bug was fixed and the paymentswere made the next day.
Bank credit card companies experienced a problem with credit card transactionverification software issues by CyberCash, Inc. This problem createdduplicate transactions for merchants that did not update their systems to thenewer, Y2K compliant versions of the software. Article,Article,Article,Article
One Chicago area bank had to interrupt electronic Medicare payments to somehospitals. Insurance companies that process and pay Medicare claims had tosend diskettes containing the processed claims to the bank via Federal Expressor courier to keep payments on schedule.
500 members of the Golden 1 Credit Union found that, once year 2000 arrived,their ATM cards would not work at grocery stores and other locations whichaccept ATM cards as payments. The cards were programmed to expire onDecember 31, 1999. The cards were not supposed to have an expiration date,and the reason that such a small number of cards had the error is notknown Article
Online banking software used by thousands of Dutch bank customers had amillennium related bug which did not allow people to postdate their electronicpayments. The software was produced by Apple. Article
A computer system belonging to the Hong Kong Futures Exchange failed as aresult of a Y2K error. The computer system controlling pricing for theHang Seng Index options contracts was miscalculating the number of days betweenthe trading day and the expiration date of many of the options traded. Article
Law Enforcement
Y2K computer bug turns teen criminals into senior citizens. Reports ofsexual assault on an 83 year old woman by an 80 year old man, and two missing'youths' of ages 83 and 84 were among the flawed reports given by the faultysystem, which caused the system to read year 2000 as year 1900, and interpretthe year of birth of the parties involved as their ages. Article
Local Government
The Department of Motor Vehicles on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands had to beshut down temporarily because of a computer glitch which prevented correctregistration of automobiles.
The State of Indiana's system for renewing driver's licenses gave someindividuals licenses that did not expire for 5 years. Indiana state lawonly allows renewals for four years.
In Florida and Kentucky, the unemployment insurance benefit systemsexperienced a bug which prevented people from claiming earned income for theweek ending on the first of January 2000. Only two of the ten states whichuse this system experienced the problem.
The state of Nevada reported that the Y2K bug created problems for systemsused by its Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. This bugaffected only people who were born in the year 1990, and was corrected without aserious impact to service. Another system used by the Child Welfareprogram system had a bug which caused the previous month's payment field toupdate incorrectly. This problem was fixed quickly, once again, without adisruption in services.
One of Florida's State University System's Regional Data Centers reported aproblem with its Computer Associate tape management system. On-line accessto the system should allow users to indicate that a tape is 'permanent,' meaningit should not be deleted. The convention in use was to indicate that atape was 'permanent' by setting its deletion date to '1999/365,' the 365th dayof 1999. This obviously created problems as we entered the year 2000, astapes which were supposed to be permanent, were marked for deletion.
The Navajo Nation Law Enforcement Office reported that 7 of its 8 lawenforcement servers had failed. These servers contain law enforcementrecords. Manual processes had to be implemented until the problems couldbe fixed.
Medical
In Malaysia there were reports of medical equipment failure. Among theequipment that failed were defribillators and heart monitors Article
Power and Utilities
Seven commercial nuclear reactors across the United States experienced minorglitches. None of these posed a threat to safety. The problems werewith computer systems that are used to support physical plant access control andmonitoring of operational data.. Details of this problem were notreleased. Similar problems were experienced in nuclear power plants inSpain. Article
A nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee experienced a bug in a computer whichtracks the weight and type of nuclear material within the plant. The bugat this plant was the only problem which did affect mission critical systems atEnergy Department facilities across the nation. Article,Article
Software
Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Hotmail both displayed incorrectdates as a result of a programming command name 'Get Year.' This commandreturned the year in two-digit format. The result of this was that datesfrom the year 3900 were displayed. Microsoft was aware of this bug, butdid not implement a fix. It asked programmers to change their code to usea new command 'Get Full Year.' Any web pages written that still made useof the old function were subject to error. Article
A large number of networked slot machines at racetracks were not operationalfor several hours. This error was caused by an application which looksthree days into the future. Article,Article
Microsoft Visual Basic versions 3.0 and older, and Microsoft Access versions2.0 and older are not Y2K compliant. Programs written using these versionsof Visual Basic may have problems not related to the code written in VisualBasic. The non-compliance of the older versions of Access poses a bigproblem, because the newer versions simply do not work well with Windows 3.0,which is still being used by a significant number of companies. Article
A customer at a New York State video rental store had a bill for $91,250, thecost of renting the movie 'The General's Daughter' for 100 years. Article
Payroll software at Berlin's German Opera denied certain employees governmentmandated subsidies for families with children. When year 2000 arrived, thecomputers date was 1900. This caused a person born in 1995 to appear 95years old, making the parents ineligible for the government subsidy. Article
Transportation
A software glitch resulting from an attempted last second fix done in hastecauses massive delays in air transportation all over the east coast of theUnited States. Article
