-=> Quoting Sheldon Lamb to Betty Holder <=-
 BH> AC> This is a hunch or idea but is it possible to maybe turn up
 BH> AC> voltage or overload a monitor to react as in "blowing-up"
 BH> AC> or "catching fire"?
 
 
 BH>     I guess a virus could burn lines (or a pentagram or
 BH>something) onto the screen, but only if the user isn't aware
 BH>of what is going on and the image is allowed to remain on
 BH>the screen.  But so could any other program.
 SL> ...Yes,but that takes HUNDREDS of hours of steady image...implausible
 SL> at best...otherwise your post was right on...
 Exactly.  That was what I was implying.  But monitor burn-in
 is pretty common, especially with the monochrome monitors which
 have no shadow mask and there is only one electron gun.  I have
 seen monitors that came out of furniture factories and offices
 where the monitors remain on steady and with the same spreadsheet
 or database on the screen.  But that was not virus related, just
 the misuse of a program and poor design.  Now days with all the
 screen saver technology we have screen savers in ROM, screen
 savers in software, screen savers in monitors, screen savers
 in power supplies (the ones that the monitor and the keyboard
 plugs into), as well as an increased awareness of monitor burn,
 it is quite unlikely that any program, virus or otherwise, will
 burn lines on the screen these days.
 
     I guess we all need to get back on topic.  I enjoy this
 echo and do not wish to be banned from it.  The topic here
 is supposed to be viruses, and I think alleged hardware
 viruses just became off-topic after all the discussion about
 one in particular which I won't mention by name.  But viruses
 may cause one to believe that their hardware is defective
 when it isn't. For example, some viruses because of the way
 that they take over or bypass the BIOS to control the drives,
 may cause one or more of the drives to appear defective.  I
 remember when I had a case of STONED that I had gotten on
 some floppies that I had used to install some stuff on someone
 else's machine.  That was before I even had a decent machine
 with a hard drive at all.  So disinfecting 8 floppy disks was
 pretty easy.  After I finished cleaning all the floppies, I
 noticed that drive B: didn't work.  I used CTRL-ALT-DEL and
 the drive still didn't work.  I finally turned the machine
 off and back on and the drive worked.  I had thought that
 the drive had failed, but it turned out that it was just
 some memory location that was altered.  
                                                Betty
--- GEcho 1.11+
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