Can boot sector viruses infect non-bootable DOS floppy disks?
Any DOS diskette that has been properly formatted contains some executable code in its boot sector. (There is some debate as to whether this code should be called a program or not. The important thing here is that this code is *executed* at system startup if the diskette is in the system’s boot drive.) If a diskette is not “bootable”, all that boot sector (normally) does is print a message (on a PC, typically something like “Non-system disk or disk error; replace and strike any key when ready”). However, the boot sector is still executable and therefore vulnerable to infection. Should you accidentally boot your machine with a “non-bootable” diskette in the boot drive, and see that message, it means that any boot virus that may have been on that diskette *has* run, and had the chance to infect your hard drive, or whatever. So, when talking about viruses, the words “bootable” and “non- bootable” are misleading. All formatted diskettes are capable of carrying boot sector viruses. Most cur
