Some programs no longer work after Norton Disk Doctor changes file dates to 1/4/80 or other past dates

Document ID:1999020316363009
Last Modified:03/30/2001

Some programs no longer work after Norton Disk Doctor changes file dates to 1/4/80 or other past dates

Situation:
Norton Disk Doctor reported invalid time and date stamps. You chose to correct these errors. Now when you try to run some programs, you cannot because a number of files have had their time/date stamps changed to 1/4/80, or some other inappropriate past date, such as 1/1/80, 1/4/80, 1/10/80, and 1/4/90.

Solution:
This situation occurs most commonly when the computer is improperly shut down, such as when it has crashed and you are forced to turn off the power. On some computers, the BIOS will reset the date to its default, making the system date an old date, such as 1/4/80. Because the computer was shut down improperly, Norton Disk Doctor (or ScanDisk) runs during the next bootup; it determines that the date of the files is later than the system date and reports the file dates as invalid.

To prevent the problem, make sure your system date is the current date before you have Norton Disk Doctor or ScanDisk repair file dates. If you have Norton Disk Doctor and ScanDisk to repair the dates on these files, one or more programs may no longer work or the system may become unbootable.

If Norton Disk Doctor or ScanDisk already repaired the file dates, and one or more programs are no longer working, reset the system date to the current date and reinstall the program. However, if your system does not boot into Windows, you may need to reinstall Windows itself. Before proceeding, make sure you have the following information:

Instructions for how to change the system date. This is done through editing the CMOS information through the BIOS. Your hard drive documentation should provide instructions.
How to backup the registry, and how to restore the backup.
How to reinstall Windows. Make sure you have access to the CD-ROM drive, especially from a DOS command prompt.
How to reinstall your programs.

To reinstall the Windows:

Reset the system date to the current date.
Backup the registry files SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT. You'll use the backup copies to restore the registry later.
Reinstall Windows.
At this point, you can either reinstall the programs that did not function (Windows programs require entries in the registry, which the reinstall of Windows has just overwritten) or you can do the following:
1. Restore the registry backups you made in Step 2. For information on how to restore registry backups, see your Microsoft documentation or the Microsoft Web site at: http://support.microsoft.com/support
2. Reinstall any programs that still do not work.

There is presently no automated way to set the dates of files and folders to their previous dates.

List of affected computers
Here is a partial list of computers that will reset the BIOS date after an incorrect shutdown:

Phoenix 4.06 sets it to 1/4/80. This type of BIOS is common on Gateway computers produced in August 1998 and later.
Award BIOS, version 1.0a, on an FIC VA-503+ motherboard
Some AMI BIOS on systems with a Cyrix 300Mhz CPU

More information
For more information on file dates, see Problems with an incorrect system date in Windows

Product(s): Norton Utilities 2000 v4.5 - Win95/98, Norton Utilities 2001 v5.0 - Win9x/Me, Norton Utilities 2001 v5.0 - WinNT/2000
Operating System(s): Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows 2000
Date Created: 02/03/1999