-- Posted by DaveH at 3:34 pm on Dec. 3, 2008 Hello A few days ago my internet connection went down, and i couldn't re-connect. A few hours after reseting my router i noticed the password had been removed. which is very strange as i'm the only person in the house which uses it. I didn't think much of it at the time and set up a new, different password. a day later firefox kept experiencing a problem everytime i loaded a new page. the same thing happend to IE7 and google chrome. I then ran my anti-virus. (AVG) but that kept crashing too, so i went to kaskpercy to download their AV trail, but when running it i was told it was corrupted. infact every .exe file i ran manually was said to be corrupted... i tried a system restore, that didn't work so i went and reinstalled XP. which i must have done about 30 times in the past. i have a perfectly good XP CD with no scratches, but when installing the OS some files couldn't be copied, i have tried a restore disk, and a downloaded version of XP and vista which i got the same problem. I didn't think this would still be the virus, as i have reformated my two hardrives when attempting to install my new operating system. I then tried to install ubuntu which i got in the post last week, the latest 8.10 version. I couldn't install that as it freazes and when running the desktop from the CD i get many error messages. So now im screwed, with no working operating system, and not being able to install one. what else can i do? I believe there is a virus on my "motherboard" if that's possible. Ive heard this many times and think it's something to do with my BIOS.  i have gone into my bios which seems to be working fine, and have loaded the defaults but still get the same problem. I have also used a new hard drive although i get the same problem. can someone help me, or tell me what has happend... im confussed and need to get my PC working again. -- Posted by bigredron at 3:36 pm on Dec. 3, 2008 a virus wouldnt appear on you motherboard, but it may be in your BIOS. you might need to flash it with a new firmware update to get rid of it. Otherwise you may have actually damaged it. Maybe borrow a mobo of a friend and see if it works and eliminate the problems that way. -- Posted by DaveH at 3:40 pm on Dec. 3, 2008 im pretty certain it's my BIOS. If i remove the battery (not the power supply) on the motherboard, doesn't that reset everything? -- Posted by Tubbz at 3:41 pm on Dec. 3, 2008 Should do, otherwise, you may need to replace components.