can a virus kill hardwar?

[garfull]

I had Win XP running on my computer when I put in a new ddr ram and downloaded an email. Then my computer when all funky. XP died on my then i couldn't boot into it. I tried to reinstall XP but the setup would stall saying it can't conpy some files. So I tried to install Win 2000 and it gave me the same error. The only OS that worked was 98 but it also gave me the same error when I tried to upgrade to ME. 98 also died after about 20 mins saying I can't boot in because of a explorer error.

I have reformated and reformated each time I tried to install a new OS but my computer still wont work. Can anyone help me this is really making me mad. Most likely the computer has a virus but I don't understand why it won't go away with the formatting. I also removed the ddr ram and put them back in hoping that would wipe any resisual memory. Could a virus embed itself into my amd athlon cache or video ram or sound card , etc.. I'm so stuck. I even ran an norton antivirus right after installing 98 and updated the definitions, then did a scan and it found noting, and still my computer is dead.

Help needed..

[billxp]

Try using your old memory if possible.

Maybe the DDR ram you have is no good.

[sho.gun]

Yep I'm guessing there's some Hardware compatibility issues, leaning towards the DDR ram as Bill stated. Formats will pretty much take out any viruses in your computer, and I highly doubt that they can reside in your video card memory. What brand of memory you have?

[garfull]

i took out the new crucial ddr and got xp installed again. it seems ok but i had to leave. i called crucial about the ram and they told me to use a program from www.docmemory.com. so thats where im at now. thanks for the help.

[spigidygak]

I dunno if its true, but I've heard of viruses killing your mobo bios, making it hard to recover.

[TommyBoomfiger]

yes, virus's can kill pretty much everything on a computer. with these new mobos with jumperless setting, a virus can reconfigure the bios settings to overclock practically anything which the speed can be changed. so technically a virus could change the fsb so high that a cpu (and probably the mobo chipset at the same time) would fry. i believe that there is also a way to corrupt physical memory so that what ever part of the chip is damaged will not be able to be read or written to. but for a programmer to do something like this, they have to know a lot about computers.

[Jeffbx]

I talked to a guy once who actually destroyed a monitor with a virus. He's this brilliant egghead type, and someone once said to him that there's no way a virus could damage hardware on a PC. So, he took this as a challenge and whipped together this neat little package that would jack up the refresh rate on your video card to weird levels. He actually blew the tube of the monitor within a few minutes of running the program.

So yes, you can damage some hardware with a virus - notably:

- well, the example above
- a virus can potentially destroy the boot sector of a hard drive & make it unusable
- if a mobo is flashable, it can flash a bad image & make it unusable
- well, pretty much any other hardware that has flash ROM is potentially at risk, although the virus would have to be specifically written to attack a particular type of hardware

[MusashiM]

Okay, look guys, Halloween is over. Enough with all the scary stories...

:eek2: :bash:

[TommyBoomfiger]

these are TRUE stories though

[K2]

yes... yes, they are!... MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA :bandit: :smash: :johnwoo2: :hehehmm: :eyebrow:

[Two Cents]

Like Billxp said, TAKE out that memory. I accidentally mixed Cas 2 and 3 memory one time and could not get any OS to install without the "can't copy" error. Frustrating, because it doesn't usually occur to you that the RAM can cause that kind of error.

[brainsmile]

start with simple fixes