What might this mean? Cannot "disable" virus warning in BIOS

[Duer 157099]

I know I know, it means something bad. But after days and weeks of troubleshooting, even to the point of reflashing BIOS and zero'ing out the HD before a reinstall of the OS... problem persists, which is on one hand a relief (to know that I've wasted days and weeks) but still gnaws at me. Why? What could be going on that would cause this?

I've updated the BIOS, so it wasn't a version issue. hell, I've even HOT-FLASHED the damn thing!! Yes, that's right. Swapped out the bios chip, same thing. I'm becoming concerned that there's a new lifeform that can somehow exist in the CMOS/ROM and survives flashings of all sorts, kind of like those extremeophiles that live in the sulfer vents deep in those ocean trenches. Have I completely lost it?

When I say I cannot disable it, it means that the system won't boot if I do. It POSTS, it goes into CMOS/BIOS menu, does the memory check and just when it's about to start loading... goes to blank screen. Even if booting up from a DOS floppy.

:shrug:

[hobbit709]

1. What motherboard? How old is it?

[Duer 157099]

2. It's old, but I don't think that's the issue

it's an emachine, mobo is the ecs L7vmm2 v1.0a

I believe it's always had this issue, but only recently have I started to wonder about it. I have another (dead) emach box that I took the bios chip out of to test on this one, and it had the same behavior. I reflashed both bios chips a few times (forward and backwards, to make sure it wasn't a bios version issue). I was as careful as I could possibly be, made a fresh flashing floppy and write protected it, etc (thinking: boot sector virus or something evil like that). Played with some jumpers onboard that I'm not exactly sure what they do, but were called "clear bios" or something (not the same as the J1 clear cmos jumpers though -- same behavior in either position - although when set to the "no" position, I would get a message after bios loaded that said "unknown flash type" (or something) but didn't seem to otherwise have an effect.

It looks like, when booting, this mobo does some sort of internal flashing (flashes itself?) - what the heck is that?

I think I've ruled out any maliciousness, but it's still just a head scratcher, so any thoughts, appreciated. Plus, it'd be nice to be able to enable virus warning/protection on the bios, yknow?

[hobbit709]

3. There was a problem with some of the old Award BIOS

There isn't much protection in those BIOS virus things nowadays. They ostensibly kept a virus from messing with your boot sector on the drive but viruses are much more devious today.

[PennDem]

4. Which BIOS and version?

If Award BIOS, check this link: http://www.sysopt.com/tutorials/article.php/3552561

[Duer 157099]

5. I'll have to check, but I recall seeing both Award and Phoenix

Thanks for that link, it's giving me new ideas to test. :thumbsup:

[Duer 157099]

6. Oh, I think I'm close to figuring this out (doh!)

I guess I should have paid closer attention to this one line that flashes quickly after the bios loads -- "Trend ChipAwayVirus(R)OnGuard V1.65. That should have given me a clue, lol.

And I was wrong about not being able to boot to floppy with it enabled (or disabled), I can.

At least I have more of a clue now... but more digging required...

http://us.trendmicro.com/us/about/news/pr/article/20070124152955.html

Trend Chip-Away Virus (TCAV)

TCAV is thus far the only anti-virus solution on the market that detects viruses during the boot-up procedure in personal computers. Most antivirus programs start working only after the PC’s start-up. Integrating the antivirus technology directly into the BIOS is the most effective way of guarding PCs against crippling boot-up viruses. Boot viruses pose a serious threat to all computer users, including home users or LAN managers. Even the latest generation of operating systems, such as Windows NT, is not guarded against boot viruses. This rule-based virus protection ensures 100% detection of known and unknown boot viruses, including polymorphic and stealth viruses.

[PennDem]

7. Another bit of info

http://www.felgall.com/prog15.htm