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PCs Ordered and Delivered at End of Fiscal Year May Be Held Up Awaiting Windows 98 Fix

A glitch involving Microsoft software and the latest hard drive technology will delay the deployment of about 140 Micron PCs ordered at the end of fiscal year 2000. The Lab authorized Micron to ship the computers to meet year-end budget needs, but the Mac/PC Support Group (MPSG) is holding off delivering the computers to users until a patch is forthcoming.

"It should be noted that it is not a Micron problem," said Desktop Support Manager Charlie Verboom. "Rather, it is an industry-wide issue with Microsoft and the latest hard drive technology (ATA 100's)."

MPSG will apply the patch to the Win98 OS when Microsoft publishes it - and the Lab tests it. The patch was not available as of this week.

Here is a Micron statement on the problem:

"The issue is that Windows makes a write call to the HDD during the shut-down process. Depending on where on the drive this call is made to it can potentially cause Windows to write to the boot sector of the drive resulting in data corruption and or data loss.

"Microsoft has made us and all OEM's aware of this issue and their first attempt to fix the issue did not work. When Microsoft has a patch available we will have it available to our customers."