Is it possible to have a trojan or virus installed in the BIOS part of Windows or CMOS
whatever the proper technical term is. Actually maybe I can revrase the statement by telling you some specifics such as when I intstalled windows Server 2003 the hard drive space was allocated
this way: of the 30 gb 29 gigs were abailable for windows to be installed on. Why was there 8 mb
of space left. What is that space used for and could there be a trojan installed on that
space? The reason I ask this is that I have run numerous scans for trojans using many diff programs
and the results were always trojan free. I have even used TDS-3 to scan my system and nothing turned up.
But, still the operating systemis not behavingthe way it should. For instance names of files the color changes to
blue when before it was black, the system shuts down by itself. I have also run a full system check using AVG Professional with the latest virus defentions and also nothing turned up. Yet, like
I mentioned before the system is not working the way it should be. I need technical help
any suggestions would be greatlly appreciated. From what I know that space is used for partioning information.
Is this correct and what kind of information is stored there and could a trojan be installed in that space?
All help is greatlly appreciated.

Hi there Greg, I'm gonna take a stab at your post so bare with me LOL.

"Is it possible to have a trojan or virus installed in the BIOS"

Yes I believe it is possible but very rare anymore.

"Why was there 8 mb of space left."

I'm not positive on this one but it is normal and not a problem. It may be used to install the command console (which takes seven megs) to recover 2003.

I don't believe it would be possible to store a virus here, since there is no filesystem.

If you are still worried about this part of the disk I recommend a program called Driverscrubber (www.iolo.com). It will let you do a end-to-end wipe on the drive. Every sector on a disk is cleaned this way, first to last.

"For instance names of files the color changes to blue when before it was black,"

If a filename turn blue it means that the file has been compressed. This isn't a problem either. Windows compresses files that haven't been used in a certain amount of time.

"the system shuts down by itself."

This almost always means there is a hardware problem. This is where I believe your problem lies.

It could be something like bad ram, dirty case/overheating, improperly seated card or cable, crappy driver, weak or bad power supply or a number of other things.

This is what I would try,

1. Update all drivers.
2. Clean the inside of the case. Check all fans.
3. Reseat all cards/cables/ram.
4. Run a memory check (www.memtest86.com)
5. Run chkdsk on the your drive.
6. If your overclocking STOP until your problem if fixed.

If that doesn't work it may be time to start pulling out unnecessary cards to see what is casuing the problem.

Hope this helps,
Sandman