For a virus or similar program to have any great impact it needs to be able to spread from one machine to another. They are specifically designed to get access to parts of your computer system that allow for communication with other machines. Below is a discussion of some of the most common methods.
Boot Infectors
Every disk (hard disk, floppy, CD, DVD) contains a boot sector whether it is a bootable disk or not. When a computer is turned on, it looks for boot information. If the computer finds a disk with boot information, it reads that information and uses it to properly start the computer. If for some reason that boot information is infected with a virus, the virus is activated and possibly transferred to the computer’s hard drive (if the infection was on a CD for example).
Once the boot code on the hard drive is infected the virus will be loaded into your computer’s memory every time you start your computer. From memory the boot virus can travel to any and every disk that is put into your computer. This is how the infection spreads.
Most boot viruses could be on a system for a long time without causing problems, simply existing...