Question about BIOS checksum / cmos battery

[cd12]

If there is a problem with BIOS checksum, is it possible that it is a virus?

It only happened once this morning. My computer turned off completely and would not start (would shut down again before POST beep). I kept trying to turn it on and then it sent me to a Bios Checksum screen, I could not read the whole thing because the computer shut down again.

Now that I'm finally on, everything seems fine and there is nothing out of the ordinary. I've run a Malwarebytes scan and nothing.

So I was just looking for an opinion.. I read that I may need to change my CMOS battery but it is quite new. Do you think this is related to malware? How do I check if something has been changing my BIOS settings?

Sorry if this is in wrong place.. ^^

[Firefox]

Hello and welcome to Malwarebytes

More than likely you need to change out the CMOS battery to prevent this. That being said, if you want to make sure that there is not something else wrong/infected pick one of the options below.

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[CWB]

yep ... two major possibilities as mentioned by FF .

many BIOS have a "battery check" function that can be accessed from within the bios .

also , many BIOS need to be "reset" if the battery has crapped out and will prompt you to do so at startup .

a coin cell (more than likely a CR-2032) is cheap enough ... maybe a couple of bucks .

i would replace it first as if you are infected and need to do some hoop-jumping and restarting a dead bios battery will make this a royal pain .

if this is in a laptop ... "uuuggghhh" is the keyword . some laptops make accessing the bios backup cell (it really is a cell , not a battery) rather troublesome (he says uphemistically) .

[cd12]

Thanks both of you ^^ I originally posted this in the malware forum but I guess it was moved hehe. I wasnt sure where to post my question but thank you so much for that post ^^

I think I will try to look at the cmos battery as since it started, it has only happened twice. If it was a virus I think it would be more frequent. And last night my computer ran for 4 hours without shutting down, so..

My computer is a desktop which I built when I was in highschool 3 years ago (the budget was $1500), but I didn't get to plug it in the wall until Xmas last year when my old computer died. This one is actually my favourite computer because it's fast and clean so it really surprised me when I found out I might have to change the cmos battery. bleh.

again ty ^^

[cd12]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I did a "clean install" (default settings) of a new nvidia driver for my GT 9500 card and a day after I did that, this started happening so I will be looking into that too!

[CWB]

"My computer is a desktop which I built when I was in highschool 3 years ago (the budget was $1500), but I didn't get to plug it in the wall until Xmas last year"

this means it sat around for for three years not powered up and slowly draining the bios backup cell .

"And last night my computer ran for 4 hours without shutting down, so.."

do you mean that the comp ran ok before you manually shut it down ?

another symptom ... most of the time a low bios backup cell will show up after the comp has been shut down for some time (say overnight) .

if you have not been prompted (at or during start up) to go into the bios and reset the time and some other items (including loading the default settings option) then i would lean toward a possible infection .

also , with some motherboards and power supplies the bios can be maintained after shutdown as the supply "folds back" and provides a sort-of keep alive for the bios (think life support) .

unplugging the power supply (comp) from the 110/220 line source overnight should be enough time to prove the cell bad or good .