all who has replied are of the opinion that virus 'never' damages hardware. this is a new, surprising information to me.. i've read 1 or 2 times some where but dont remember exactly that anti viruses are programs some of which are powerful enough to destroy the hardware itself by executing the malicious programs... anyway i'm not heading for an argument, but would like to have a more expert opinion... the copy of xp which i installed is a time tested one...i'd been using it for the last 8 yrs... there is no problem with the os - 100 percent sure... as i told first i installed a fresh copy of xp while being inside the os (i mean double clicking the cd icon)..at that time i formatted only the c drive... as soon as i finished installing that virus popped up, forcing me to do a perfect installation... i booted from the cd itself and formatted the complete hard disk and partitioned it and then installed xp in one of its partition...even at this time even before plugging in a pen drive or using a cd/dvd, the virus popped up - its a kinda svchost virus... now please suggest whether ur points are valid