virus

[jsanchez]

hey kids,

not too long ago, in one of my college courses, there was a mention of a virus frying a cpu and motherboard? is that possible? thought they couldn't do anything to the hardware....thanx.

[Carl Price]

Some viruses make your harddrive heads bang against their stops and can ruin them.

With flashable bioses and switchable voltage regulators come another set of problems. Some viruses can erase the flash programming of the motherboard bios leaving you with a worthless board. I have heard that some can increase the voltage going to the processor ruining the processor. I have no personal experience with this however.

Yes, viruses can do damage to hardware. A rule of thumb that I have heard is "If you can change it, a virus can change it."

[Nuclear Krusader]

**shivers uncontrolably**

[doctorgonzo]

I think it is certainly possible, with "jumperless" boards that control core voltage and multiplier settings through menus in the BIOS instead of through jumpers. Such a virus, however, would be specific to a particular BIOS, and thus would only be able to infect a very small population of computers. The threat level would be quite low.

[reboot]

Do some reading on the Chernobyl virus, aka Win95_CIH.
It attacks hardware.