But several other date-related problems could occur, including on Sept. 9, which is only days away. Glitches could show up in the form of old computers shutting down, possible data loss or computers locking out their users. Another common use of the Sept. 9 date was in an older programming practice that used the series of numbers as an indefinite date for scheduling events. A third issue stems from customized functions within software.
Programs created for personal computers are less likely to be affected.
K problems said they don't expect any serious computer problems Thursday, but they also said that anything is possible. John Gregory, a project manager at Compuware Corp.'s offices in Milwaukee who has been been working on Y2K issues for the last three years, said that the software and computer services firm has gone through hundreds of millions of lines of computer code in various languages for clients and not found the date to be a problem. Marsha Woodbury, director of information technology for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said that Sept. 9 doesn't come close to having the possibilities for problems that Jan. 1 does. But those problems would only be for really old systems. No information would be lost.