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BIOS Option Of The Week
Since 1999, we have been developing the BIOS Optimization Guide, affectionately known as the BOG. From a meager beginning of a single page, it now covers over 400 BIOS options. As old BOG readers will know, we started offering two editions of the BOG since Revision 8.0 - a simplified edition and the complete edition.
In the simplified edition, the description of each BIOS option in this guide is condensed and written in a simplified format. This simplified edition is not a sampler or demo version of the complete BIOS Optimization Guide. It is merely a simplified version with all the essential points and minus the frills.
The complete edition, on the other hand, features both simplified descriptions as well as full details of each BIOS option. This allows you to quickly get the gist of what each BIOS option mean and delve deeper into the details if you wish to learn more about it.
Normally, the complete edition is only available to subscribers who help sponsor the development of the guide through a small fee. However, that changes today! From now on, we will post a BIOS option from the complete edition of the BIOS Optimization Guide every weekend. We hope this will help you improve your knowledge of BIOS options. If you find the guide useful, be sure to tell your friends! 
This week, we will be taking a look at the Anti-Virus Protection BIOS option.
Anti-Virus Protection
Common Options : Enabled, Disabled, ChipAway
Quick Review
This BIOS feature controls the motherboard's virus protection features..
When enabled, the BIOS will protect the boot sector and partition table by halting the system and flashing a warning message whenever there's an attempt to write to these areas.
This feature can also cause problems with software that need to access the boot sector, e.g. the installation routine of all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. When enabled, this BIOS feature causes the installation routine to fail. Many disk diagnostic utilities also access the boot sector and therefore will likely trigger the system halt and error message as well. Therefore, you should disable this feature before running such software.
Alternatively, you can select the internal rule-based anti-virus code, e.g. ChipAway. Enabling ChipAway provides better anti-virus protection by scanning for and detecting boot viruses before they have a chance to infect the boot sector of any hard disk drive. However, please note that both anti-virus solutionswill not affect any hard disk drives that run on external controllers because these controllers have their own BIOS.
Details
The Anti-Virus Protection feature is actually an enhanced version of the Virus Warning feature. Besides the standard boot sector or partition table protection, this BIOS feature can offer more comprehensive anti-virus protection via built-in rule-based anti-virus codes like ChipAway.
When enabled, the BIOS will protect the boot sector and partition table by halting the system and flashing a warning message whenever there's an attempt to write to these areas. This is a useful feature, but do note that it only protects the boot sector and the partition table, not the entire hard disk drive.
This feature can also cause problems with software that need to access the boot sector. A good example would be the installation routine of all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 95 onwards. When enabled, this BIOS feature causes the installation routine to fail. Many disk diagnostic utilities also access the boot sector and therefore will likely trigger the system halt and error message as well. Therefore, you should disable this feature before running such software.
Alternatively, you can select the internal rule-based anti-virus code. The software used in the reference motherboard is called ChipAway. Enabling ChipAway provides better anti-virus protection by scanning for and detecting boot viruses before they have a chance to infect the boot sector of any hard disk drive. It is far better than stopping the system and issuing an alert on all attempts to access the boot sector or partition table.
However, please note that both anti-virus solutions only apply to the motherboard's native IDE or SATA controllers. It will not affect any hard disk drives that run on external controllers because these controllers have their own BIOS. Boot sector viruses will bypass the system BIOS with its anti-virus protection features and write directly to these hard disk drives. Such controllers include additional IDE, SATA or SCSI controllers that are either built into the motherboard or installed in the form of add-on cards.
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| Date | Revision | Revision History |
| 01-12-2008 | 1.0 | Covered the Intel Turbo Mode Tech BIOS option. |
| 07-12-2008 | 1.1 | Covered the DRDY Timing BIOS option. |
| 14-12-2008 | 1.2 | Covered the ACPI 2.0 Support BIOS option. |
| 21-12-2008 | 1.3 | Covered the Overclock Recovery BIOS option. |
| 28-12-2008 | 1.4 | Covered the EXT-P2P's Discard Time BIOS option. |
| 04-01-2009 | 1.5 | Covered the Graphics Aperture Size BIOS option. |
| 11-01-2009 | 1.6 | Covered the Memory DQ Drive Strength BIOS option. |
| 18-01-2009 | 1.7 | Covered the PCI-E Maximum Payload Size BIOS option. |
| 25-01-2009 | 1.8 | Covered the Max Async Latency BIOS option. |
| 01-02-2009 | 1.9 | Covered the Chipkill BIOS option. |
| 08-02-2009 | 2.0 | Covered the PCI Delay Transaction BIOS option. |
| 15-02-2009 | 2.1 | Covered the MAC Media Interface BIOS option. |
| 22-02-2009 | 2.2 | Covered the Digital Locked Loop (DLL) BIOS option. |
| 01-03-2009 | 2.3 | Covered the PCI-E Max Read Request Size BIOS option. |
| 08-03-2009 | 2.4 | Covered the DBI Output for AGP Trans. BIOS option. |
| 15-03-2009 | 2.5 | Covered the V-Link Mode Selection BIOS option. |
| 21-03-2009 | 2.6 | Covered the Errata 94 Enhancement BIOS option. |
| 28-03-2009 | 2.7 | Covered the Errata 123 Enhancement BIOS option. |
| 05-04-2009 | 2.8 | Covered the Dynamic Idle Cycle Counter BIOS option. |
| 11-04-2009 | 2.9 | Covered the Gate A20 Option BIOS option. |
| 20-04-2009 | 3.0 | Covered the Split Lock Operations BIOS option. |
| 26-04-2009 | 3.1 | Covered the DOS Flat Mode BIOS option. |
| 03-05-2009 | 3.2 | Covered the FPU OPCODE Compatible Mode BIOS option. |
| 10-05-2009 | 3.3 | Covered the LD-Off Dram RD/WR Cycles BIOS option. |
| 17-05-2009 | 3.4 | Covered the Odd Divisor Correct BIOS option. |
| 24-05-2009 | 3.5 | Covered the No-Execute Memory Protect BIOS option. |
| 31-05-2009 | 3.6 | Covered the ISA Enable Bit BIOS option. |
| 07-06-2009 | 3.7 | Covered the Interrupt 19 Capture BIOS option. |
| 14-06-2009 | 3.8 | Covered the Internal Graphics Mode Select BIOS option. |
| 28-06-2009 | 3.9 | Covered the PCI 2.1 Compliance BIOS option. |
| 05-07-2009 | 4.0 | Covered the SATA AHCI Mode BIOS option. |
| 12-07-2009 | 4.1 | Covered the L1 Data Cache Context Mode BIOS option. |
| 09-08-2009 | 4.2 | Covered the Maximum Read Request Size BIOS option. |
| 16-08-2009 | 4.3 | Covered the Delay DRAM Read Latch BIOS option. |
| 23-08-2009 | 4.4 | Covered the No Mask of SBA FE BIOS option. |
| 29-08-2009 | 4.5 | Covered the CPU Fast String BIOS option. |
| 06-09-2009 | 4.6 | Covered the CPUID Maximum Value Limit BIOS option. |
| 19-09-2009 | 4.7 | Covered the CPU Hardware Prefetch BIOS option. |
| 27-09-2009 | 4.8 | Covered the CPU/DRAM CLK Synch CTL BIOS option. |
| 04-10-2009 | 4.9 | Covered the CPU Drive Strength BIOS option. |
| 18-10-2009 | 5.0 | Covered the CPU Direct Access FB BIOS option. |
| 24-10-2009 | 5.1 | Covered the CPU Adjacent Sector Prefetch BIOS option. |
| 01-11-2009 | 5.2 | Covered the Compatible FPU OPCODE BIOS option. |
| 08-11-2009 | 5.3 | Covered the Clock Throttle BIOS option. |
| 15-11-2009 | 5.4 | Covered the Byte Merge BIOS option. |
| 21-11-2009 | 5.5 | Covered the Burn-In Mode BIOS option. |
| 29-11-2009 | 5.6 | Covered the Boot To OS/2 BIOS option. |
| 06-12-2009 | 5.7 | Covered the Boot Up Floppy Seek BIOS option. |
| 13-12-2009 | 5.8 | Covered the Auto Turn Off PCI Clock Pin BIOS option. |
| 20-12-2009 | 5.9 | Covered the Athlon 4 SSED Instruction BIOS option. |
| 27-12-2009 | 6.0 | Covered the ATA(PI) 80-Pin Cable Detection BIOS option. |
| 02-01-2010 | 6.1 | Covered the AT Bus Clock BIOS option. |
| 17-01-2010 | 6.2 | Covered the Assign IRQ For VGA BIOS option. |
| 24-01-2010 | 6.3 | Covered the ASF Support BIOS option. |
| 31-01-2010 | 6.4 | Covered the APIC Function BIOS option. |
| 07-02-2010 | 6.5 | Covered the Anti-Virus Protection BIOS option. |
