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Posted by cquirke (MVP Windows shell/use on May 12, 2006, 12:40 pm
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On Thu, 11 May 2006 17:33:21 +0300, Zvi Netiv
>> I am running Windows XP SP2 on a ASUS P4C800 Deluxe motherboard (Intel 875
>> Chipset with Award BIOS dated November 2004). My software virus protection
>> software is Kaspersky Anti-Virus Personal 5.0.
>> I have have the Boot Sector Virus Protection inside my motherboard's
>> BIOS turned OFF. Will turning it ON give me any "further" protection
>> in general? Or might it actually have conflict problems with Kaspersky
>> and/or Windows XP SP2?
No, it won't really help you much, and there are better ways to manage
the few scenarios where it would be effective.
It can botch OS installations that do write to the boot records etc.
Other than that, it shouldn't make much difference either way.
>There is no benefit in turning it on and it won't protect the "boot sector" nor
>the MBR while XP is running.
>The BIOS virus protection will only fire when attempting to write to the MBR by
>intermediary of interrupt 13h, with basic partitioning utilities such as FDISK
The only scenario where it may be relevant, is if you accidentally
boot from a malicious disk or device; at that stage, access to MBR
etc. will most likely be done via BIOS, which it could protect.
A better solution for that, is to set CMOS Setup to boot the boot HD
before any other devices, and to not boot from other devices.
But there can be a wrinkle there, when you want the reverse (i.e. you
want to avoid booting the HD while operating from Bart or other boot
CDR etc.); many boot CDs will fall through to boot the HD if booted
unattended, and this bypasses any CMOS-level blockage of the HD as a
boot device (IOW the CDR's code "boots" the HD directly).
Bart PE has a built-in plugin you can enable or disable to control
this boot-through; for my purposes, I block it.
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Tip Of The Day:
To disable the 'Tip of the Day' feature...
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