Detecting Boot Sector Viruses- Applying TRIZ to Improve Anti-Virus Programs

The boot sector virus infects the boot record of the hard disk or floppy disks. It gets loaded onto the memory every time the computer is booted and remains resident in the memory till the computer is shut down. Once entered it alters the boot sector of the hard disk and remains in the hard disk permanently until the system is totally damaged and fails to boot. While analyzing the problem from TRIZ prospective we try different possibilities to avoid boot sector viruses, such as, Can we do away with boot record? Can we avoid booting from floppies? Can we make the boot record virus resistant? Can we keep the boot record in a place which virus cannot access? Can the boot record checks itself for virus? Can we load the anti virus before loading boot sector? Can we remind the user to remove unwanted floppies from the drive? One method to avoid boot sector virus is by loading some kind of anti-virus before the computer is booted. One possibility may be to load such an anti-virus from a ROM chip. Another possibility may be to load such an anti-virus from a hidden partition that is not accessible to viruses or other programs. Another method to avoid boot sector virus is to store the boot sector in a separate ROM chip, which is protected from any kind of infection. Although this method works satisfactorily to provide protection against boot sector viruses, it requires an additional ROM to be bought that adds to the cost of the system