Gordon Totty wrote:

>This is sort of a theoretical question.  System files on a computer are repeatedly getting corrupted in spite of extra care with virus detection, reloading from clean sources, etc.  The HDD has been wiped and reloaded, but the problem returns rather quickly.  Two questions:
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>Is it possible for a virus to exist in the normally inaccessible HDD manufacturer's space on the HDD?
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>Is it possible for failing HDD to produce these symptoms?
>Yes to both questions, Gordon. Viruses have been known to reside in both the boot sector and MBR sections of the hard drive and fdisk and format may not see or bother to write over the area. You need to zero the drive with a utility. This USUALLY wipes out the offending code. I use wdclear.exe but a search on google will turn up lots of free utilities. As to a failing hard drive, corruption is common as areas of the hd become unreadable. A scandisk usually finds these areas and locks them out from further use, but if there's debris bouncing around in the hard drive, more of the surface is physically damaged each time the drive is used and, consequently, more data becomes corrupted each time. I hope this helps.  Michael
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>Gordon Totty
>
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        The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website,
           web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
              Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com