Anyone ever had a BIOS VIRUS?

[lyle]

I'm thinking this is my problem.

I built a system for a friend about a year ago. It's been running fine until recently. He's surfing when all of a sudden IE errors out and closes. He re-opens IE and a few minutes later the whole system blue screens. He re-boots and gets a STOP ERROR, XP doesn't even load. He can't get it to boot even in Safe Mode. He tries to do a Repair Install of XP using his CD, and the process stops at a STOP ERROR at the point where it starts to load Win XP.

At this point he calls me and I verify all he has stated. I notice that his BIOS is acting real wierd, I'll set it to boot from CD and it'll bypass the CD and try to boot from his HD. I DISABLE his HD boot option and it still bypasses the CD. As a last resort I try to update his BIOS with the latest, and I can't even do that. I get differing errors, BIOS checksum, etc., and then some error where it says the file is not for this model motherboard. I tried a new CMOS battery, too, but still the same thing.

I ask him when was the last time he updated his virus definitions, and he says about three or four MONTHS ago. I have a bad feeling about the data on his HD, so I plug it into a spare system I have as a slave, and the HD is completely corrupt. Not a single readable file anywhere on the disk.

Right now, I have a motherboard that can't be used because it can't access any HD, and a HD that is completely corrupt. I may try low level formatting to see if I can rescue the drive (cripes, it's a 160 gigger), but I think the mobo is junk. I might see if I can get a BIOS chip for it.

So, anyone ever heard of such an animal as a BIOS Virus?

[VMU]

i remmember i had a really old IBM in my house, and that somehow my brother got some kind of Bios virus in to the pc. Now i havent heard any case of it since, so im not sure if they still exist. oh and for the pc we just had to give it away :(
edit: i dont think they exist anymore, or are just to weak for current system and the AntiViruses. If at anypoint i am wrong plz correct me. THX

[Mr.Rotory]

Never heard of such a virus, but I think it might be your south bridge chipset. If you have an nforce that is or if via kt600, then its your north bridge. But I had a similar issue's, although not nearly as bad, however I would get errors constantly while installing windows or all of a sudden my computer would restart, or hd not detect. I've hated Asus ever since, it was a a7v333, and good luck proving to them that its the southbridge, because it only did it a few times over periods of time and over the time got worst (plus killed my psu, precious 430 truepower, dam asus, anyways) over time my computer would need constant reinstalls due to corruptions, plus during use I would get unexplained errors, i thought i would probably be my hd's. Anyways, I got a new board because my asus started killing my second truepower. So i bought an NF7, let me tell you after dealing with this issue, Abit Nf7-S had me at hello, I installed windows and every other driver/program without a single error, it was bliss and my power was right on. Your southbridge manages your hd's so it could be that.

[lyle]

It's not an AMD/VIA setup, it's an Intel 845D north with whatever southbridge the BD7 came with. It's just goofy how I can't flash the BIOS anymore, even with older BIOS revs, always an error, never the same twice in a row.

[KILLorBE]

I've heard about the CIH (Chernobyl) virus.

The CIH virus attempts to ERASE the writable FLASH BIOS of infected PC's, and also overwrites the first 2,048 sectors (1,048,576 bytes) of all of the system's available non-removable writable disk drives!

More info and a possible fix for the HDD can be found here (http://www.grc.com/cih.htm).

[RoadWarrior]

Some things to check.

BIOS write voltage. Some boards have a 5V/12V jumper on them for different chips, make sure it's set right. If you were trying to program a 12V chip with 5V that might explain why A) a virus such as chernobyl was unsuccessful in completely wiping it in the first place and B) why you can't reflash it now.

RAM, faulty RAM can make a HDD corrupt and can also break BIOS flashing, the floppy drive uses DMA and is very sensitive to RAM errors, there are situations where a machine will seem to boot a HDD to a command prompt but not a floppy, and the reason is that the HDD isn't using DMA yet (It's initialised by 32bit OSes) Errors of this kind can also be caused by faulty L1 and L2 cache, or by RAM or cache that is too hot or too far overclocked. So to eliminate any such issues, try flashing with a differrent stick of RAM, bus speed set low, and L2 cache turned off. It might be slow but should work.

On plugging a HDD into another system. It often works, note the word often. However generally you can only absolutely rely on a HDD format that was done on the machine you are using it on. Some BIOSes and IO chipsets do things just a little differently, if you get two machines at opposing ends of the standards allowance, then there can be problems, the drive will seem corrupt. I am not saying that the drive is not corrupt, just that this is something to be wary of. This happens most often with large drives, the addressing methods used on different motherboards can differ. For a 160Gb drive in particular, be sure the machine you are trying to read it on supports drives larger than 127Gb. Another particular situation (given as an example) is when using a drive smaller than ~27Gb from a machine that doesn't support >27Gb addressing, on a machine that does, it most often won't work. There's nothing wrong with the drives, it's the way the BIOS of the particular machine formatted them to work with that particular machine.

Lastly, you mentioned you changed the CMOS battery, but nothing about clearing the CMOS fully, a quick switch could have maintained corrupt settings. Corrupt CMOS settings can do very wierd things. Use the clear jumper or leave the battery out for half an hour to clear the CMOS RAM properly. Clear it again after a BIOS flash.

regards,

Road Warrior

[JimmyG]

Very well said, RW!

[Aslan]

Agree completely with Roadwarrior. I tend to doubt that your problem is caused by a virus, as BIOS viruses are very uncommon, and the most prominent one, CIH, was released in 1998, and I would think your friend's virus scanner would have picked it up, despite being not up to date.
Also, if you find that you cannot fix the hard drive at all, even with low level formatting, I suggest that you try this (http://www.voodoofiles.com/11759) program. It will restore the hard drive back to factory settings, and has saved a couple drives for me that nothing else could fix.

[lyle]

I've done all that stuff.

I've successfully flashed this board a few times in the past, and to my knowledge there is no BIOS enable jumper to configure.

I replaced ALL the RAM with a known good stick that I took out of one of my systems, same symptoms.

I connected the HD to an Intel i865 based system which currently has a WD 200GB HD as the master, so there should be no size conflicts with that BIOS. It reads as a Maxtor 160GB drive during POST, and the upon boot the OS tells me that the file system is corrupt and can't be read.

I pulled the CMOS battery before I went to bed and replaced it the next afternoon with a battery "Best if used by Mar 2009". I still can't flash the BIOS, it keeps erroring out with different errors each time.

I am going to low level format the drive with PowerMax, and if that doesn't work I will use the WreckDisk. I found a refurbished board for $35, so all he's lost is ALL HIS DATA!! Man, when he found out, he was not happy. I have told him many times in the past to backup his data, he even has a DVD burner. I guess we all have to learn sometime.

[amanojyaku]

i have to say that is the worst virus i have ever seen.

[prynce_qt]

never knew one exists.