Eh? It killed me 1TB hard drive...

It's not as common... a virus that attacks your computer's hardware, rather than software/data.

it shouldnt have been able to kill your hard drive hardware virus are very rare now adays.

What they did was overwrite or erase a motherboards cmos and render it useless. Hard drives are mostly mechanical and do not need stand alone software to opperate, The only thing i can think of is that whatever virus you had could have been writing to the disk constantly and it just got to hot and died. Depends on how long you had it and if you leave your pc on all the time.

This is just a therory i dont think ive ever heard of it happening but it seems semi plausable.

so, are you saying it's better to turn your computer off when not in use?

They say you get most of your virus and shit like that when you leave your computer on 24/7.

But not you right??, you bought McAffe.

No its norton i wouldn't touch that gay mac what ever.

it happened to my old computer too...

i downloaded an infected song file from limewire and it overheated and fried my hard drive.

it sucks, but i still had a factory warranty so i got it replaced no problem

yes it's good to turn your computer off when not in use for multiple reasons. another is that your RAM does not completely purge itself after you shut down a program. so the longer you use your computer without a restart, the less available RAM you'll have.

bootstrap virus?

What exactly do you mean by "killed?"

Simply put, I was playing Sims 3 then my wife decides she wants to move around the living room where our computers are. We did that, then I hooked all the computers back up except mine wouldn't boot. It told me something like I needed a readable device or something. So I called Taco, who is a n00b, but rarely posts here, and he came over and said I had a "hardware virus" on my hard drive.

What really pisses me off is this: I don't visit strange web sites, I don't download things from frostwire or limewire or anything else. I check my email, the news on yahoo, cnn and bbc, then check these forums. Then I play games of some sort. Usually CSS or (lately) Sims 3. I don't visit a lot of porn sites, but if I do, it's usually www.myfreepaysite.com But I've never gotten anything from them.

I've been using Windows Live One Care as virus protection, never had a problem with that.

So, in short, (of the long I'd like to say) how did I get this?

can you try pulling your hard drive out and plugging it into another computer as a slave drive or second hard drive to double check it?

also, this may sound stupid, but do you have a CD or DVD in your drive? i've had that cause issues during boot up a couple times.

and really, sometimes hard drives just fail. it doesn't necessarily mean you got a virus or did anything wrong. technology can't work 100% of the time.

So how is Sims 3 anyways?

The simplest explanation is usually the best. Your hard drive decided to die right as you moved your system. Moving a computer is the easiest way to kill the components.

The last thing a virus wants to do is to kill the hard drive, if it does and you replace the hard drive, you've effectively removed the virus. As far as I know, there's no consumer level viruses that can infect the BIOS. I know the ability exists, but it typically involves a custom virus written specifically for that motherboard.

A virus isn't required to destroy the bios. It's very easy to run a file that contains the wrong bios flash image, or even just be doing something to interrupt the flashing procedure, which effectively means getting a new motherboard. Usually the person using the computer should initiate the flashing procedure. But I agree with Jet - Occam's Razer is more probable than every other possibility combined.

How is Occam's Razor invoked here?

Jet's idea that the HDD simply died, instead of being attacked by a virus.

You shouldnt use the word "die" on a mechanical artifact, since its not a living being, kkthxbye.

or is it?

It has a mind of its own watch out.