Okay, here's a really strange one for you.

There are no dates showing on anything in my Windows 2000 (SP 4) system.

When I view the contents of a folder, it shows the correct time, but no date at all.

When I look at the properties of anything, it shows the correct times (created, modified, accessed) without the dates, although sometimes it show "boxes" for the access time.

When I look at the system clock (date/time applet), for the date it shows 1. That's right, no month, just a 1. If I open the pulldown list, it shows 12 lines of 1s. If I select the 4th "1", it shows the month layout for April.

If I look at an event, the date column has a blank value.

If I sort a folder by its date column, it sorts by the time within the date, so the dates are there, just not displayed.

The date and time in the bios is correct. The time shown in W2K is correct, just cannot get a date to show for anything.

Does anyone know what controls this? I've found the entries in the registry, but they all look fine.

Update: When I go into the Control Panel - Regional Settings, everything is fine until I click on the Date tab. Then it pops up with a box saying "Error - One of the files on your computer may be corrupt or missing. To replace the file, reinstall Windows." I can't believe I have to reinstall W2K just because one file is missing/corrupt (yet I can change the date values, like "/" to "-", and it keeps the new values). I just can't find which file controls this.

Doug

Do you have any restore points you could go to? Did anything appear when you go to windows update site? Have you tried doing a repair operation from your 2000 install disk?

Hi Doug.


That's most likely a .cpl file error.
Look for and check version #'s of intl.cpl (sets time\date format) and datetime.cpl (sets time\date). One or both may be corrupt or missing. Unfornunetly I do not know the correct versions for win2k sp4.
On XP SP2 they are both ver. 5.1.2600.2180.


I would be surprised if it was that simple. I would suspect corruption elsewhere as well.
Replace\Reinstall the above two cpl files with the correct version and let us know how it goes.

Yep, tried the repair facility, and can't find anything related on the microsoft site. If I search for windows 2000 dates missing, it gives me old articles about the release date of w2k. <g>

Unfortunately, I lost my internet (and phone) for a few days, so couldn't read these replies until now. Meanwhile, I've restored from a backup.

You're probably right, that there might be more serious problems than just a corrupted .cpl file. However, thanks for the pointer. I've never known what cpl files did.