Asked By
cathrine
370 points
N/A
Posted on - 05/23/2011
I have experienced some virus attack on my PC. As I use Windows XP service pack 2 this seems much vulnerable to viruses as I have seen some attacks of Trojan virus, win sality and many other viruses. But I have one question. Are those viruses capable of damaging the Hardware of the computer? If those are not capable then is there any other virus which can do any damage to the hardware?
I am just curious about this thing and i think it can be helpful to take security measures to defend against those viruses as those are much dangerous than those which just cause damage to the software or the system. So I think this is a very important question about security. I hope someone will answer it as soon as possible to make us aware of this type of dangerous viruses.
Answered By
gamer
220 points
N/A
#101559
Is there any Virus which can Damage the Hardware of PC??
Cathrine,
You are at the right place. Read the following very carefully.
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I shall name a virus which is called Chernobyl that actually deleted the BIOS from the computer. And many other devices in your computer. Those are a few kind of firmware namely WiFi adapters, Ethernet adapters, optical drives, dial up modems and many more. I would like to say viruses are programmed to delete or corrupt the firmware of these serious and extremely necessary devices.
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I have heard that a fake, not original Microsoft update did almost finish up a computer nearly a year ago. The owner of the computer was just allowed to use a friend's computer because of his drawing and stuff and after publishing at one night. Then the following morning the computer did not start on anymore. You cannot believe there were no BIOS and no monitor signal. When the owner had looked up inside, he saw there was no replacement of power available. There was hooking up a new hard disk but that was also nothing.
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Once I ran a virus scan before the I shut down my computer. I did find nothing. But could you tell me how come my system seems dead? I was testing my computer hard disk in another operating system. I did not find anything in my hard disk. And that was really horrible. If you face that kind of situation, you may go crazy. But I kept myself cool, I decided not to go to any other system and any more computers. When I was not able to find that and all my well known expert colleagues couldn't find that, I did not know what I was up against. However, I can surely guess a dangerous computer virus is able to destroy anything. The virus can do harm to both the software and hardware.
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A harmful virus looks like a good device, like a soft programmed toy is which is able to provide give one to throw in the edge on the fight, rather I say when that costs one of our escape path to the milky way. No industry does guess at future till then, only more to economical matter.
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In America there was a man who designed a virus that makes the system in idle process up to like 120. Suppose when you move your mouse the virus is able to melt the hard disk and processor. Moreover it was able to even explode.
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A virus can make your processor fan much slower which can cause to burn your processor.
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A few viruses are able to send some instruction to AGP or VGA card. You know a Graphics output card that generates video signals that one can watch in the screen of a monitor. As a consequence, the AGP card generates not proper signals to the monitor. The mechanism of a monitor is to pass light into one or more than one pixel points at random nature. Then after some time the monitor will not work.
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A virus is able to delete the partitions of your hard disk too. For that all data of your hard disk will be erased.
So Cathrine, always be on alert and keep your computer from any kind of viruses. Never ignore any malicious and unknown program. I expect all of these information will help you. Have a great time with your PC.
****Gamer****
Is there any Virus which can Damage the Hardware of PC??
Hi Catherine,
Every computer hardware is controlled by one or more computer program / software (drivers and/or operating system). A virus is a software and if somehow it can supersede the original software, it will be able to control the hardware. Once a virus does that, it can do damage to the hardware up to certain points.
Until around 1995, it was believed that virus won't be able to damage hardware. Then, somebody created Win95/CIH. It was the first virus that could damage a hardware and unfortunately not the last. CIH did this by erasing the Flash BIOS so that the computer won't be able to boot up anymore.
Then there were also Chernobyl, Kriz, and Magistr. All did the same thing by erasing the BIOS. While actually it only removed the data in BIOS, it essentially made the BIOS unusable. The only way to fix this is by replacing the BIOS chip or buying a new motherboard.
Another way a virus can damage the hardware is by doing a particular action to the hard drive such as writing and rewriting on a hard drive millions of times. It doesn't always break the hard drive, but there's a possibility that it will create bad clusters on the hard drive.
Then there were also viruses that over clocked the CPU while slowing down the processor's fan speed, which could burn the processor. Another rather funny (yet still devilish) example is the virus {Win32,W97M}/Beast.
During the night, it will open and close the CD-ROM lid for hours. This of course, would break the CD-ROM. However, a virus cannot make a hardware explode like in the movie Die Hard 4. So, don't worry, no matter how evil a virus is, it won't be able to bomb your house.
Is there any Virus which can Damage the Hardware of PC??
Hi Cathrine
Here is something that you can read on so you will have an idea if a virus can actually damage your computer’s hardware. Click on the link below to redirect you to the article:
Can a Virus Actually Damage a PC Hardware?
