Warning Disk boot sector to be modified?

[Socio]

I have never seen this before;

My brothers computer got a virus or so he thinks and his harddrive was trashed, I could not do a low level format with out locking up with errors. So I pulled that harddrive and installed a new Western Digital eide drive for him. I booted the computer to re-install is OS and the bios found the new drive ok. Then I got a warning screen the said " Warning disk bootsector to be modified press y to continue or and other key to abort" "Awards bios"

I have installed a lot of drives ide and scsi in my time and I have never seen that warning before, I even instaled his old drive on that system and did not get that warning. So I am wondering if that is normal or could there be a virus be in his bios that trashed his old drive and if allowed to modify boot sector trash the new one?

Thanks for any help

 

[KarenMarie]

I had that problem once... a long time ago. I did a web search and found this:

NOTE: The following error message may also be encountered:
Warning: disk boot sector is to be modified, press Y to accept, and any key to abort.

CAUSE:
Some computers include a feature that prevents applications from writing to the boot sector. Such features are normally in the form of anti-virus protection set in your computer's CMOS settings. If anti-virus protection is enabled, Windows cannot complete its installation, or it does not load properly.

RESOLUTION:
Disable the anti-virus feature in your computer's CMOS settings, and then reinstall Windows. Once you have successfully installed Windows, re-enable the anti-virus feature.

For information about accessing your computer's CMOS settings, please consult your owner's manual or your computer manufacturer.

MORE INFORMATION:

The following computers have been found to display this problem:
? Acma Pentium 120 computer
? Award Modular BIOS v4.50G, copyright 1994-1995, Award Software
? 586 PCI Green BIOS 52xver.A
? Award BIOS v4.50 3.03G, dated 12.02.93, 84-93 VT82C486A

 

[Socio]

Ah I see, I will disable the antvirus in bios thanks!



Edit: I bet the bios anti-virus was what was causing the errors on his old drive when I was trying to do a low level format and his old drive was not borked afterall!