Microsoft experienced two glitches with its consumer Internet services, the Hotmail Internet e-mail service and the MoneyCentral.com financial services site.

But although both problems surfaced during the New Year transition, only the Hotmail glitch is considered to be Y2K related, said a spokesman for Microsoft. The Hotmail glitch involves a display problem in which e-mail sent during or before October 1999 could show up dated with the year 2099. The MoneyCentral problem, in which users_ portfolios displayed inflated values for some mutual funds, was ultimately traced to an incorrect data feed from one of Microsoft_s third-party providers, Standard & Poor's Comstock financial information service, the spokesman said, and was corrected very shortly after it was discovered. Microsoft is still working to correct the Hotmail error, the spokesman said. However, there was no disruption in Hotmail service at any time, and the error does not affect display of the message contents or the sending or receiving of mail, he added. Microsoft identified another problem that coincided with the year 2000 rollover earlier this week, but this has not created any problems to the company_s knowledge. The problem, which affects Internet Explorer (IE) 4.01 for the Macintosh, relates to the certification expiration date in the browser. According to the Microsoft spokesman, some certificates embedded in IE 4.01 for Macintosh expired at midnight on December 31, 1999. So users attempting to access a secure site after that date may receive an "expired certificates" warning. However, like the Hotmail glitch, the certificate error is essentially a display problem and does not hinder a secure connection to Internet sites, the Microsoft spokesman said. "The padlock goes away at the bottom of the browser window, but you still have the same encryption happening on the back end," Sohn said. "You can continue after you get the warning message, and security will not be compromised." Sohn also said that users were informed of this particular software problem via the Year 2000 update page on the company's Web site about a week before the date change. Macintosh users with Power PC processors can download an upgrade to Internet Explorer 4.51 at www.microsoft.com/mac/download. -- but there is no upgrade for non-Power-PC users.