is it possible to get a virus in the BIOS?

[minofifa]

Hi,
I have been having some troulbe with booting my computer. Somebody told me that i may have a virus in the BIOS. I have reformatted and reinstalled windows. would the virus remain in the BIOS after i reformatted? how do i get rid of this virus if it does exist? thanks for any help

 

[lockmac]

As far as I understand, it is almost impossible to get a virus in the BIOS. The BIOS is a read only chip that is on the motherboard. Reformatting and reinstalling windows is going to have absolutely no affect on the bios whatsoever. If you believe that your BIOS is playing up a bit, it might pay to update it. Try resetting it and that may have an affect.

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: lockmac
As far as I understand, it is almost impossible to get a virus in the BIOS. The BIOS is a read only chip that is on the motherboard. Reformatting and reinstalling windows is going to have absolutely no affect on the bios whatsoever. If you believe that your BIOS is playing up a bit, it might pay to update it. Try resetting it and that may have an affect.

You just contradicted yourself. "The BIOS is a read only chip" and "it might pay to update it."

 

[minofifa]

how does one go about updating OR resetting the BIOS? i'd like to reset mine to make sure that i dont' ahve a virus in it. i'm getting a message that says i may have a virus in there or i may have a hardware problem, i want to eliminate the possiblity of a BIOS virus so how do i reset it?

 

[lockmac]

Yes, it may be Read Only, but it can be updated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read-only_memory

 

[jbh129]

Please provide the make and model of your mobo and we can help. Also, do you know what version of the bios you are running?

 

[minofifa]

i'm not sure as to what version of the bios i have, how do i tell?

as far as the make, its an ASUS K8N deluex i belive. the one with the nforce chipset and it runs my AMD athlon 64 3200+. does that make any sense?

 

[lockmac]

Yes that makes sense. Use the asus software that comes with it to update the bios. Then see what happens

 

[hopejr]

BIOS Read only? not for years! It's an EPROM chip (sometimes known as flash memory, or firmware). That's why you can update it.

 

[gsellis]

Yes, it is possible to get a BIOS virus. But it is highly unlikely, and I do not remember hearing about a virus that was in the wild that did that. It has to be very specific and that is hard to do and be small enough to fit into BIOS with the ability to reproduce. Most virii that effect BIOS try to wipe it (Chernobyl).

What is more likely is that you have a malfunctioning piece of hardware. What are the specifics to your issue?

Edit - When you get a chance, you might want to go to this site and do some reading. VMyths

 

[powerMarkymark]

IMHO, flashing the BIOS is not for the uninitiated.

If you have never attempted, you might ask a technicaly savy friend or the technician at the shop where you bought the machine/parts.

 

[Regs]

5-6 years ago it was possible to get a virus that could corrupt the BIOS. They do not exist today thanks to the security measures taken in manufacturing motherboards.

 

[ronach]

You may have something going on in your [ MBR ] master boot record of your harddisk, with that said, what are you useing for an anti-virus program or other software to protect yourself ?

 

[minofifa]

cool, thanks for the help guys.

 

[minofifa]

Originally posted by: ronach
You may have something going on in your [ MBR ] master boot record of your harddisk, with that said, what are you useing for an anti-virus program or other software to protect yourself ?

ya that's it! it said something about that as well. wouldn't a reformat get rid of anything in there though?

 

[powerMarkymark]

Originally posted by: minofifa

Originally posted by: ronach
You may have something going on in your [ MBR ] master boot record of your harddisk, with that said, what are you useing for an anti-virus program or other software to protect yourself ?

ya that's it! it said something about that as well. wouldn't a reformat get rid of anything in there though?

Yes

 

[gsellis]

So would a FDISK /MBR

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: minofifa

Originally posted by: ronach
You may have something going on in your [ MBR ] master boot record of your harddisk, with that said, what are you useing for an anti-virus program or other software to protect yourself ?

ya that's it! it said something about that as well. wouldn't a reformat get rid of anything in there though?

I'd run a zero-fill (AKA low level format) on that HD to get rid of a virus in the MBR.

Fern

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: hopejr
BIOS Read only? not for years! It's an EPROM chip (sometimes known as flash memory, or firmware). That's why you can update it.

Electronically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory

Doesn't make much sense to me either - either it's read only or it's not. But that's what EEPROM stands for. They don't call them "writable CD-ROM's" - they're "CD-R's," or "CD-RW's".

So according to the acronym, it's read only, but it's not.




That aside, there are a few viruses that do infect the BIOS, but they are few. Residing in the BIOS without affecting the motherboard's function would be difficult, and there wouldn't be much space available anyway for a lot of code.

The master boot record thing that's been suggested should take care of it. Note though, if your BIOS has some anti-virus setting enabled, it may try to prevent the boot-sector write, even though it's of your own doing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Regs
5-6 years ago it was possible to get a virus that could corrupt the BIOS. They do not exist today thanks to the security measures taken in manufacturing motherboards.

Actually, quite the opposite. Older motherboard, when they first started adding flash BIOS chips, required you to switch a hardware jumper to flash a new BIOS. Nowadays, what with everything being so "Windows-friendly", they have removed that hardware lockout feature from nearly all current board. There may or may not be a software/chipset lockout, but that's easily bypassable. In fact, most modern BIOSes including the flash tool as part of their code!

Unless you mean checksums, but those can easily be faked and patched along with loading a rogue BIOS.

Edit: CD-RWs used to be called "erasable CDs" too, when they were first developed. They didn't think that that sounded good from a marketing perspective, so they changed the name. Too bad they are still unreliable, and tend to "erase" on their own, after being used a few times. I miss magneto-optical media.

 

[Mik3y]

perhaps a virus in the boot sector?

 

[hopejr]

Originally posted by: Mik3y
perhaps a virus in the boot sector?

They already mentioned that (MBR).

 

[minofifa]

haha as usual, i can follow a thread to about the 15th post, after that I am completely lost. That said, i'm taking my computer in to the local "pro" computer techie shop to get it fixed. One day i plan to read a big thick book on computers so i have a friggen idea of what half you guys are talking about. i really do appreciate the help, a very knowledgable group here! anywho, i'll post when i get my computer back and tell you what the store tells me...

thanks again

 

[EpsiIon]

Originally posted by: lockmac
Yes, it may be Read Only, but it can be updated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read-only_memory

*Sigh* You said you couldn't get a virus in your BIOS because it's "read only" and then you suggested that he update it. Well when you update it, you WRITE to it. You can download utilities that write to your BIOS, so yes you can conceivably get a virus in your BIOS.

That's how you contradicted yourself.

 

[yeahitsme]

Let me start by saying that I am no expert. I will give you answers in plain english. I just ran into a problem on my network where 3 computers would not boot. The BIOS was asking for a boot password. The only way I got around it was to do the following.

First disconnect all power
Open up the box
On the mother board there is a battery that looks like a large watch baterry, remove it.
Close by there is a jumper (plastic peice connected to two pins), remove it.
Reconnect the power to the computer and turn it on (it will not look good)
Power down the computer
Reconnect the jumper and the battery
Turn the computer back on
This will restore the BIOS to the factory settings.
If you are still having trouble then it is most likely not the BIOS