HD Doctor Blog

Before discussing what a boot sector virus does, let’s first take a look at what a boot sector is. A floppy disk or hard drive is comprised of many segments and clusters of segments, which (in the case of a hard drive) may be separate by partitions. There has to be a way to find all the data spread across these segments, hence the boot sector operates as a virtual rendition of a library’s Dewey Decimal system. Each disk also has a Master Boot Record or (MBR) that locates and runs the first of any necessary operating system files needed to facilitate operation of the disk. When a disk is read, it first seeks the MBR, which then passes…

When it comes to data storage, viruses can be divided into two basic categories:

• Viruses that delete data.
• Viruses that corrupt data.

Viruses that delete data will tell the Operating System (such as Windows) to flag files as being deleted. The data itself becomes unavailable but it still exists on the platters until it’s overwritten. This data is recoverable using 3rd-party data recovery softwares which will scan the platters and mark recognizable files as not deleted, effectively restoring them to the directory structure.

 Viruses that corrupt data are the most dangerous because they overwrite files with garbage data and then possibly flag them as deleted. This makes the data unrecoverable.
In either case,…

Computer viruses are proving to be highly complex but preventing viruses from infecting your computer systems is simple. Use two well-known brands of anti-virus software and keep them as current as possible.

Beyond that, there are some simple, common sense procedures that everyone should use, whether at work or in the home computing environment. Never open a file whose origins are unknown. In a simpler day, that wisdom only applied to executable files, or files that did something. They have the suffixes .exe, .com and .bat and each can start a program on your computer. These viruses spread through games downloaded from the Internet, on borrowed diskettes and through the old ‘bulletin board’ services.

Today, unfortunately, a whole new wave…