BIOS SETUP SECURITY

[Osaban]

Hi there,
I was checking my Vista laptop "Bios Setup Utility/Security", under "Security Settings" there's an entry "Boot Sector Virus Protection [Disabled]".

I was wondering what exactly does it mean, and if it should be enabled, these settings are all default.

TIA

[Osaban]

Disregard this post, as I found a lot of info simply by googling it.

[bonedriven]

Then what's it for? In short? :blink:

[firzen771]

seems interesting, im curious what it is for?

[Seer]

Copy-paste into Goggle search box a no-go?
For the sake of this thread, it write-protects the boot sector of HDD.

[Osaban]

-{ Quote: "Disregard this post, as I found a lot of info simply by googling it." }-

I didn't mean I didn't want to share, I was too busy to post anything.

Basically for what I could learn it is a feature offered in the BIOS by some manufactures (in this case ASUS), but it is also detected by most AVs, so I'm not sure whether it is worth activating it on my computers. I'm always wary about changing BIOS defaults, and I'm particularly concerned about what it might do inadvertently (when performing an image of the system as an example)

Some info:

http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/a/bootsectorvirus.htm

http://www.avira.com/en/support/support_downloads.html

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/122221

-{ Quote: "Boot Sector Virus Protection On or Off?
It write protects the boot sector. This basically does not allow anything to be written to the boot sector. Thus, viruses

will not be able to infect the boot sector without infecting your BIOS, which is extremely hard to do and would have to be

done with a floppy.
You should enable it anyway. The only way to infect the boot sector after enabling it would be to use a floppy to infect

the BIOS. With it turned off, a virus can infect the boot sector easily." }-

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=222922