BIOS Virus???

[rkoenn]

I build systems and had a first experience yesterday. I built a guy a system 6 months ago with an MSI KT266 motherboard. The OS is WinXP home. Last Friday when they were using it, they had just finished updating NAV when the machine did a reboot while logging onto MS Messenger or AOL or something. From that point on, it would boot into windows desktop, start logging onto chat boards and loading memory resident programs and then shut down and reboot. I thought I was going to have to reload Windows, but after spending some effort I got it to boot OK and I think it may have been NAV that was causing it. Really don't know for sure. Anyway, I used Fixit to clean it up and ran a virus scan with fixits scanner and everything seemed to be working fine. The guy picked it up and took it home and called me later that night to say when Windows tried to load, it would blue screen with a message the the BIOS was not ACPI compliant. It would not boot into safe mode either, obviously since the kernel could not load. I tried everything I could think of to no avail. I then decided to reload XP from the CD, but after loading all the drivers, it also displayed the same message. At this point I was kind of stumped, but having another KT266, I thought maybe I would try that BIOS chip. I plugged it in and the machine booted right into XP with no problems. And while troubleshooting, I had verified ACPI was enabled and even tried other configurations with no success. So, did this BIOS have a virus or something. I did flash it when fixing the original problem. Also, I had run it a number of times before I gave it back to the guy and had no problems until he tried to start it. Could a BIOS virus be set off based on a timer or something as seems to be the case? Anyone with knowledge of this type problem's help would be greatly appreciated. Also, should flashing the "faulty" BIOS chipd with a "good" BIOS fix the problem?

 

[Kartajan]

Sounds to me like a faulty BIOS chip. I mess with electronics regularly, and see "intermittant" faults frequently. I don't see how the BIOS that is loaded bieng bad could cause that problem, but you never know- that might fix it.

(I personally would just send back the chip for a new one if you can.)

 

[Buz2b]

Many possibilities but it sounds as if you got it fixed OK. The simple answer is that the BIOS chip is faulty; not a virus. It also sounds like NAV was the culprit of something else that maybe was unrelated to or compounded by the Faulty chip. NAV is famous for that. Just send it back if you can or get a replacement (already flashed) from Badflash.com.