Bootsector malware / rootkits / malicious drivers. Signing your kernel code is largely ineffective against if you cannot trust the FULL start up process because malware that has access to the hard drive can evade detection or bypass signing by patching the OS.

maybe it's me but I'd have thought people would have used OS/2 being able to build and test at the same time... i know by the time the divorce happened it'd probably get you into trouble.. lol Although I'm sure you could just load a bootsector on Windows/386 even and boot fresh dos

MS-DOS 4.00 is MIT licensed, so you are free to use it as you want. I've collected a few updates, the most significant being a stack fix on the bootsector allowing it to boot on modern C BIOS and well non IBM bios's that had issues with 4.00 GitHub - neozeed/dos400: Microsoft DOS 4.00 · GitHub

And for the record I def did my share of VBA viruses From word 6.0 all the way to office 2005 I probably had 250 entries in McAfee or Dr Solomon I think at one point most of the VBA polymorphic engines I wrote Office SR1 bypass with the import/export modules- that was me VBA code that edited itself to include comments or garbage code so long it memory corrupted McAfee? Guilty as charged That one weird multipartite polymorphic High level virus that infected PE, office files and the bootsector with a dropped debug.exe to write to the MBR and store a copy of itself in an unused sector and marked it bad? Yep, sorry

🚀 OTC Talks #11 🗓️ Feb 21, 2026 | 10:30 PM IST From FASM bootsector (MBR/BIOS) → C bootloader (dd QEMU) → modern UEFI with EDK2. Explore how machines take their first breath ⚙️🔥

Especially you dey play some some winning 11 then from no where bootsector virus bab your machine

Bootsector not found

I'm guessing it's stuck with a 32Bit UEFI with no CSM support? If that's the case give this a try: github.com/FlyGoat/CSMWrap This allows booting stuff that used bootsector boot path instead of UEFI. You could then run 64bit OS that way.

Hello from bootsector

secure boot does not protect you from this type of malware... It might prevent persistence in the bootsector, but that doesn't matter. It can just install kernel drivers or whatever instead.

Yeah awesome hardware:) @sidecartridge For me, I gotta make sure I don't enable 16MHz (via floppy bootsector), so it stays at 8MHz. Not had any issues since doing that. Some floppies don't work like the BBC Menu Disks but many do. Still playing here ;)

got really sidetracked today trying to fix something for work and ended up writing a bootsector virus for the ibm pc 5150

I spent all morning long trying to fix my PC's bootsector after windows decided to self destroy some files. I hope you guys are having a better day than me lmao

thinking about x86 bootsector games and the hot mermaids from disney channel

Just saw some videos on YouTube where they made “Bootsector” Games and even “TetrisOS” (yes, the Tetris game is the OS)! Wishing to see something similar but far better by Pikuma!

FWIW- you can fit a good-enough-for-use forth in the bootsector github.com/cesarblum/sectorf… It is easier to produce something like that by directly coding it in machine code than a full assembler, which is going to be much larger. forth can be shockingly compact.

okey acabo de desinstalar gnu grub y linux mediante comandos de windows tocando el bootsector y estoy con la adrenalina al palo

Linux mint came in clutch. Laptop bootsector got currupted somehow. Copied the ssd contents to external hard disk using Linux mint live USB

it's been a while since I posted some young, goated lowbies... here's a few to better your TL: @newpantswhodis -> built his own 8-bit CPU, with his own instruction set, assembler and CPU emulator and implemented Conway's game of life in 256 bytes of Assembly, made a brilliant YT video about it and iscooking up some more @RGBCubed -> man's working on his own OS in Rust, lots of PL theory and systems programming takes @cachecrab -> well-known zigma, wrote a brainfuck interpreter in Zig as his first project, great articles, lots of PL theory and systems programming takes also (RGBCubed and cachecrab come as a package deal imo) @PrashanthK0 -> rawdogged pong in assembly as a bootsector program @igorjmichalak -> working on wireless mesh protocol, all kinds of cracked and getting better every time I blink @Laz4rz re-implemented GPT2 from scratch and made a brilliant write-up on it, now doing a write up on his leetcode journey (which is also brilliant)