Changing computer year by its self????????

Question: This there a way for a computer Pentium 4, Windows XP, to malfunction on its own and only change the year in the calendar, but to keep the correct day and month?

There was only one computer that was issuing official certificates of a town, that were needed to run in a local election. 10 people of the opposing party received certificates with the incorrect year, but the day and month were correct. The program takes the computer date and prints it on the paper. The date should have read September 10, 2006, but it instead it read September 10, 1998. These people were disqualified from the election because this certificate was old.

I believe that a human went and changed the computers calendar. Is this assumption correct?

Is there a way for the computer to have changed the year by its self, while not affecting anything else?

If the battery of the computer would have ran out, then the whole date would have changed back to the default January 1, 1900 or the computer would not start up. Is this also correct?

Please email me at George@inkarpathos.com

Reply 1 : Changing computer year by its self????????

The date is not necessarily 1900, and a computer with a dead CMOS battery will still start up.

Your post was not very clear but from what I gather either all the CMOS batteries died on the machines (when mine goes, as it does sometimes it goes back to May 2001) or if they are networked someone maybe played a prank.

That said, my iBook goes back to the early 1900's.

Reply 2 : Changing computer year by its self????????

Hi, its sounds to me like this was man-made, the Operating System (Windows) would not change the time on the Calendar by itself. Sometimes when the CMOS battery goes bad the time and date will be behind, but the time will be the first to be affected, not just the date.

Reply 3 : Changing computer year by its self????????

I have been a repairman of PCs since before the IBM 5150 was introduced. In all this time, I have never seen the year change on a PC (leaving the day and month untouched) without external influence. By that, I mean that either software or a human has made the change.
Some programs installed on a PC have the ability to manipulate the date - but you or another human must execute the command - much like opening the date/time dialogue window nowadays to make the adjustments.
As for CMOS or a low battery causing this inadvertently - nope. I have never, ever, seen this this happen.

I have, however, encountered the exact same situation you have: The only the year on the clock suddenly jumped back a few years. It was later found to be done by a human, not playful electrons. With today's PCs, you can connect to and update your time at several Internet sites. Some hardware can be purchased with access to atomic clock date/time capability to adjust the clock as well. But a standard WIN/XP PC without these external influences? Nope: I say, "No way".

Reply 4 : Changing computer year by its self????????

I have a Win7 HP doing close to the same thing, if you power it down and unplug the Power supply, it goes back to ground zero, new CMOS battery no help. I'm a computer tech also and I have not opened and debugged anything yet. I would think if the smart clock had no power there would some kind of error messages. Let it to HP to create problems no one has heard of.