Over the weekend my wife mentioned that her Mac Performa was acting up. On the file content lists, each item carries a "last modified" date. Since January 1, she said, every individual item's date was massively screwed up -- an item last modified on april 3, 1998, for example, was dated "JanApr 3" with no year. Other files were listed as being created in FebMarch or JanSeptember, with no particular relationship to their actual "last modified" dates, with all years missing. The problem appeared in both hard drive and disk fields. It was a minor problem, quickly remedied by our 15-year-old geekette muttering sacred phrases and waving her hands across the keyboard, but the words JoAnne Effect immediately came to mind. Has anyone else had this problem? Any ideas?

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), February 09, 1999

Answers

Cash,

The Mac has an internal battery that stores certain PRAM settings, including the time and the date when the machine is turned off.

First, go to the Time and Date Control Panel and make sure they are set correctly. Then, after the machine is shut down, check again. If the settings don't hold, you may need to replace the battery. They're about 20 bucks from an Apple repair place, you may be able to order them from the Web.

This is most likely what the problem is, as it is quite common...

-- pshannon (pshannon@inch.com), February 09, 1999.

You're probably correct, pshanon, but I thought it was very curious that the problem did show up until she turned on the computer for the first time after Jan. 1. She didn't mention it until last weekend because it didn't affect her work until she tried to do a search by date. (OK, OK, so she isn't the world's biggest computer whiz. At least she didn't wait until June.) Our daughter fixed the problem easily enough and it seems to be holding.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), February 09, 1999.