12) Write protecting suspect floppies stops infection. (Favourite myths - Computer virus)
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This article is from the Computer viruses FAQ, by David Harley D.Harley@icrf.icnet.uk, George Wenzel gwenzel@telusplanet.net and Bruce Burrell bpb@umich.edu with numerous contributions by others.
12) Write protecting suspect floppies stops infection. (Favourite myths - Computer virus)
This sounds so silly I hesitate to include it. I've never seen it said
on a.c.v., but I've heard it so often in other contexts, I've included
it anyway. Write-protecting a suspect floppy will only protect that
diskette from *re-infection*, if it's already infected. It won't stop
an infected floppy from infecting other (write-enabled) drives.
If you boot with a disk in drive A which is infected with a boot-sector
virus, the fact that the diskette is write-protected will make no
difference at all.
Write-protecting a *clean* floppy will indeed prevent it from being
infected (but see below!).
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