Problems caused by the Y2K bug

It irks me that people still claim the Y2K bug did not cause problems. The reason it didn't cause the economy to crash is that many thousands of us worked very hard to fix it in time.

And after we saved the economy, they threw us on the trash heap. Some job openings would actually stated that people who had worked on Y2K conversions should not apply.

And in 2000, when so many of us were out of work, President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill passed by Congress, including many Democrats in addition to the expected Republicans, to greatly increase the number of H1-B visas because business lied and said they couldn't get qualified U.S. IT workers. What they really wanted was cheap labor.

http://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/~eroberts/cs91/projects/y2k/Y2K_Errors.html

The Y2K bug did actually cause many problems in the United States and around the world. These problems weren't as widespread as many people expected them to be, but there were enough of them to make us realize that the Y2K bug was a real problem. The most common problems which arose immediately in the United States were very inconsequential for all but a small portion of the population. The majority of the problems related to the Y2K bug didn't occur as the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999, but in the following days. Below is a list of some of the bugs which were reported. A nation by nation list compiled by the International Y2K Cooperation Center is available at can be reached by clicking this link: IY2CC List of Bugs

Of course, these are just the ones reported to the IY2KCC. At one company where I did Y2K conversions, they overlooked a program that calculated pension payments, and it stopped working on Jan. 1, 2000. I'm sure this was not reported to anybody outside the company.

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The Federal Housing Administration reported minor Y2K related problems in three "mission-critical" systems. ... The third system which experienced problems was the Single Family Insurance System (SFIS). This error prevented users from terminating FDHA mortgages.

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Financial Sector

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago experienced Y2K related problems in transferring $700,000 in tax payments. The bug was fixed and the payments were made the next day.

Bank credit card companies experienced a problem with credit card transaction verification software issues by CyberCash, Inc. This problem created duplicate transactions for merchants that did not update their systems to the newer, Y2K compliant versions of the software.

One Chicago area bank had to interrupt electronic Medicare payments to some hospitals. Insurance companies that process and pay Medicare claims had to send diskettes containing the processed claims to the bank via Federal Express or 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 which accept ATM cards as payments. The cards were programmed to expire on December 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 not known.

Online banking software used by thousands of Dutch bank customers had a millennium related bug which did not allow people to postdate their electronic payments. The software was produced by Apple.

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Local Government

The Department of Motor Vehicles on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands had to be shut down temporarily because of a computer glitch which prevented correct registration of automobiles.

The State of Indiana's system for renewing driver's licenses gave some individuals licenses that did not expire for 5 years. Indiana state law only allows renewals for four years.

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Medical

In Malaysia there were reports of medical equipment failure. Among the equipment that failed were defribillators and heart monitors

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Power and Utilities

Seven commercial nuclear reactors across the United States experienced minor glitches. None of these posed a threat to safety. The problems were with computer systems that are used to support physical plant access control and monitoring of operational data.. Details of this problem were not released. Similar problems were experienced in nuclear power plants in Spain.

A nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee experienced a bug in a computer which tracks the weight and type of nuclear material within the plant. The bug at this plant was the only problem which did affect mission critical systems at Energy Department facilities across the nation.

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A large number of networked slot machines at racetracks were not operational for several hours. This error was caused by an application which looks three days into the future.

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A customer at a New York State video rental store had a bill for $91,250, the cost of renting the movie 'The General's Daughter' for 100 years.

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A software glitch resulting from an attempted last second fix done in haste causes massive delays in air transportation all over the east coast of the United States.

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