Virus question

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Some of you may remember when I first joined CF I had overheating issues with my graphics card and had to add extra cooling since my case isn't very well ventilated.

I also had a virus around the same time which took a while for me to get rid off (was using nortons which is shite).

This just occured to me, can a virus cause over heating by making the cpu or gpu run faster or more proceses?

 

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Yep it can... i know one guy`who got infected with a virus that changed in BIOS settings and fryed his cpu...

a virus can do almost anything, its a program remember, the only limitation is the knowledge of the programmer writing the code...

nowadays, its a lot more simiplier as there are loads of info on the net + kiddie scripts or whatever they are called.

 

Thanks cheeks, see I was wondering if the virus I did have was more of the cause of overheating I had than the lack of fans I had.

Since then I added another fan at the back and an exhaust card, and my gpu temp doesnt go above 68c even when running crysis or cod 4, wonder if I should remove the fans and see what happens.

 

try it if you like, but i reckon the items you added would of improved your system stability...

 

Yeah probably would have improved stability, before I added them I was getting random reboots and overheating I thought it was the PSU as its a cheap one but since adding the fans and doing a full format and reinstall of all software I have never had an issue since.

I have even added ram and a firwire card.

So the overheating was either because my case wasn't ventilated very well or the virus, maybe a combination. Just to add my card is a silent passive cooled card so maybe the passive cooling doesn't work that well but I have never found any complaints about them on the web.

 

Really? Which virus was that? As I'm aware a virus requires that a system to be active passed the boot-up stage, then maybe reset the BIOS. Secondly, there are so many different bioses out there that I can't see how it is feasible to specifically do this.

A virus is perfectly capable of corrupting the bios, and maybe it was this corruption that happened to badly overclock his system.

The programmer works within the constraints of a system. We can't make a system do anything we want.

Agreed, but depending on how sophisticated you want it to be it becomes harder to find such info.

@GBL: It's very unlikely that a virus is causing your overheating, especially since the system still runs although hot (?) and you've stated that your system has poor cooling. If you know what virus it was specifically, look it up to see how it affects a system and improve your cooling. As I recall you have a passively cooled graphics card? You clearly need one with a fan for a start, because the ambient high temp inside your case will progressively decrease the efficiency of the card's heatsink.

 

I would say also, that it is highly unlikely that a virus caused the overheating GPU issue.

In all the research that i have done over the years removing thousands of instances of malware, i have yet to see overheated graphics processor as part of their symptoms. However, using 100% CPU cycles is as common as muck.

 

I agree with Mathematix on this really. I would suggest the virus has nothing to do with the over heating.

In regards to virus's being able to tamper with bios settings, there are programs with which you can overclock GPU's e.g. riva tuner. If a virus programmer was to use something along the lines of this type of program, it could perhaps be do-able? I'm no hacker so I don't know

 

Precisely. I won't say how it's done, but it only takes one line of code and doesn't require the BIOS to be fiddled with.

 

I can see where your logic comes from, but the last time I used Riva Tuner some years ago it worked within the constraints of the system, but warned about certain settings that could damage it.

 

Thanks guys for the info

 

There are viruses that can damage the CMOS, and who knows what all damage that can do to hardware. Here's an example of one in the two links below.

http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.ca/data-recovery-press/index.aspx?getPressRelease=621

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIH_virus

 

So there are virus' that can damage the bios thanks Freddy

 

GBL - there are viruses that are designed to damage the BIOS. Freddie's example (Chernobyl) is the most widely known, but there are others out there. For several reasons, it isn't easy to write a virus that affects the BIOS - which may indicate why there haven't been more attempts at doing so. Some of the nastier viruses infect the MBR, which, to the uninitiated, often seems like it is 'a BIOS virus' because it seems that no matter how clean their install of Windoze, including a fresh install from known good media, the virus 'keeps coming back' - this is because the MBR itself hasn't been overwritten during the reinstall, ensuring that the virus will return like a bad penny. I've also, on more than one occasion back in the Win95/98 days, had to deal with people who kept reinstalling Windows using a floppy to start up with that was already infected - not much chance of getting a good install from that

Most of the time, rumours spread from people who don't have a Danny about PCs spouting some bullshit or other on a forum - the guy that Cheeks mentioned earlier may have just been hiding his ignorance of a problem similar to the ones mentioned above by using the 'technowaffle' trick. I've been working in this industry for a long time - and sodding about with computers for much longer and, apart from a couple of instances of CIH variants back in the late nineties, and some deliberate infections in lab environments, I have not come across confirmed instances of BIOS viruses in the wild. So, like I said, BIOS viruses are out there, but its not likely that it caused your overheating issue.

As stated earlier by others, a huge number of viruses, however, will max out CPU cycles - either by design, through poor coding or as a side-effect of the 'true' purpose of the virus (mass mailing, DDoS etc). In fact, probably 90% of viruses will, if left unchecked, eventually lead to the CPU being maxed - which, if left to run continuously, would obviously shorten the life of the CPU (though likely not cause it to overheat to the point where it shut down regularly, unless it was overclocked, or ridiculously dusty inside the case etc.

 

Thanks for the information.


So the overheating I had was probably to do with my crap case and not enough fans. I am going to clean the inside tomorrow so the fans are kept nice and clean.