In order to get permanently "infected," something has to have "memory"
that "remembers" the infection.

For example, hard drives have the operating system and most everything
else on them, so they can contain a virus.

Regular memory loses everything when it loses  power, so it can not get
infected.  (It can contain a virus while turned on.)

Bios/cmos can get infected if it can be written to.  Most new Bios is on
"flash memory"  which can be written to, hence infected, by a sophisticated
virus.  Old "proms" on older computers cannot be infected.

I don't know of a cd-rom or modem that has sufficient memory to store
a program.  I suspect that modems have a small amount of memory that
can get trashed, but I would not call it a virus, since it cannot spread.

A similar statement is probably true for sound cards as for modems.  Video
cards contain a lot of memory, but I don't **think** that it is programmable
in an
infectious sense.

With new, more sophisticated stuff coming out all the time, this all may
change.  But,
I, personally, would trust my cdrom, modem, and sound card.

Dean Kukral    [log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Kupferer" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 12:31 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] can hardware (PCI) get viruses - cd-rom's sound cards
modems


I have a computer that is constantly burning out hard drives.  I don't know
if it's a virus but I suspect.  Is it safe to salvage the cd-rom and sound
and modem and other pci cards.  I have heard of cmos viruses and boot virus
checkers.  So I think memory and bios and cmos can get viruses but I'm
thinking I'm going to take the cd-rom and pci cards out of it for another
computer.  Does anyone know if cd-rom's and modems and sound cards can get
viruses.

thank you

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