What is boot sector protection in BIOS?

Quick Review. The Fixed Disk Boot Sector BIOS feature provides rudimentary anti-virus protection by write-protecting the boot sector. If this feature is enabled, the BIOS will block any attempt to write to the boot sector and flash a warning message. This protects the system from boot sector viruses.

What does boot sector virus do?

A boot sector virus is a type of malware that infects a system’s boot partition or the Master Boot Record (MBR) of a hard disk. During startup and before security software can be executed, the virus executes malicious code.

Can a virus damage a hard drive?

CIH (a.k.a. Chernobyl) virus pandemic took over thousands of machines. That malware corrupted data stored both on a hard drive and on BIOS chips on motherboards. Some of the affected PCs would not start as their boot program was damaged.

How boot sector virus hampers the booting process?

The infected code runs when the system is booted from an infected disk, but once loaded it will infect other floppy disks when accessed in the infected computer. While boot sector viruses infect at a BIOS level, they use DOS commands to spread to other floppy disks.

Can a virus destroy a motherboard?

As a computer virus is only code, it cannot physically damage computer hardware. However, it can create scenarios where hardware or equipment controlled by computers is damaged. For example, a virus may instruct your computer to turn off the cooling fans, causing your computer to overheat and damage its hardware.

What if the drive contains a virus that wipes out your computer?

A virus that overwrites the drive’s boot sector renders it inoperable. Reformat the drive, or reconstruct the boot sector, and the drive will work again. If a virus wipes out files, you can restore from a backup, and you’re back in action.

What virus replaces boot record?

An overwriting boot virus overwrites MBR, DBR or FBR sector with its own code, while preserving the original partition table or logical drive information. A relocating boot virus saves the original MBR, DBR or FBR somewhere on a hard or floppy drive.

What does the fixed disk boot sector BIOS feature do?

The Fixed Disk Boot Sector BIOS feature provides rudimentary anti-virus protection by write-protecting the boot sector. If this feature is enabled, the BIOS will block any attempt to write to the boot sector and flash a warning message.

What is the purpose of the Boot protection feature in BIOS?

This protects the system from boot sector viruses. Please note that it offers no protection against other types of viruses. If this feature is disabled, the BIOS will not block any writes to the boot sector.

How do I remove a boot sector virus?

In most cases, it takes bootable antivirus disks such as a Symantec/Norton AntiVirus (SAV/NAV) rescue set to properly remove a boot sector virus. Some common boot sector viruses include Monkey, NYB (also known as B1), Stoned, and Form. A boot sector virus can cause a variety of boot or data retrieval problems.

What is the best protection against boot sector viruses?

The best protection against boot sector viruses is the same as against viruses in general: a good antivirus program with up-to-date virus definitions. Antivirus programs do two key things: