[Nottingham] Can viruses affect the BIOS?

[Michael Leuty]

I'm sort of in charge of the network at the Church Office (blind leading 
the blind, but they can only afford mice) and from the peculiar 
behaviour of the PCs I'm pretty sure that they're riddled with all 
sorts of malware.

Today I tried loading Mandrake 10 on some of the PCs, but I found that 
the two Win98 machines wouldn't let me boot from the CD. One allowed me 
to enter the BIOS setup, but despite choosing "CDROM, C, A" as boot 
order it still went straight into Win98 on the hard disk. The other 
wouldn't even allow me to enter BIOS setup.

Can malware affect the BIOS in that manner?

I think the only solution is to buy some new cheapo machines. The basic 
model in the Dell range is about £200. Has anybody any alternative 
suggestions or comments?

All helpful remarks worth at least 30 days off Purgatory.   ;-)

-- 
Michael Leuty
Nottingham, UK