BIOS Virus

RubberDuckie · Post by **RubberDuckie** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 6:43 pm

Is there such a bug?

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 7:01 pm

Yes. Extremely rare, difficult to implement, and for all intents an purposes you don't need to worry about it.

Pugsley · Post by **Pugsley** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 10:22 pm

Nothing to see here move on

RubberDuckie · Post by **RubberDuckie** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 10:29 pm

FP... maybe you can help here.
I have a computer Im trying to clean with a fresh install of XP.

1st HDD:
Had windows installed with serious boot problems. So I boot from WNCD and format drive and copy windows files. When the computer reboots during the install the HDD is detected in BIOS but will not boot. I start over and then WINCD can no longer format the drive. I place the drive in a working USB enclosure and put it on my computer which can not see the drive. The drive is gone even in disck management. The drive is old so I mark it gone and start with another HDD.

2nd HDD:
Same thing. WINCD formats and copies win files. Then fails on reboot. The drive is gone in all the same ways as above. Again this drive was an older 10Gig I had in the closet so I mark it as dead and try a third.

3rd HDD:
Same thing. I verified the drive was working this time by formatting it in my USB enclosure from my computer. Then put it inside the other computer. WINCD copies win files and trys to reboot with the same failures. I place the drive back in my USB enclosure and I can not find it.

This computer has killed 3 drives and the only thing I can think of is bad power killing the PCB or a BIOS Virus killing the boot sector or something.

Any ideas? I can provide more information assuming I can get it. But these drives are no longer visible in any form I know of.

Shadow250 · Post by **Shadow250** » Mon Nov 28, 2005 11:55 pm

may be your hdd controller killed it, my old soyo did something like that. or it could be bad power.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Nov 29, 2005 7:53 am

I'd suspect the PSU killing the drives. I've seen this happen many times and even on my own workstation.

I had leakin caps in an Antec PSU (found this out later after the post mortem). The computer ran fine but every time you rebooted (and this system was on 24/7 so it rarely got rebooted) the PSU caused a voltage spike that hard drive didn't like. This PSU killed 3 drives before I figured it out.

I really don't see this being a BIOS virus. They're very rare and this is not the behavior I'd expect. The only one I'm even aware of just flashes your bios with garbage data making the computer useless. I'm actually unaware of a BIOS virus that actually silently runs in BIOS and then does nefarious things.

RubberDuckie · Post by **RubberDuckie** » Wed Nov 30, 2005 12:56 am

computer going to the dumpster ... Thanks