[SOLVED] Sounds stupid, but can pictures be linked to a CPU?

[Dapplefrost]

I consider myself pretty tech savy and have built/upgraded numerous PC's in the past, however, I have NEVER come across this...

So I built myself a second PC with older, used PC parts. The only parts I brought new was the PSU, case and SSD's. Just wanted to keep the build under £350 as its for work only (Although I'm using it now to write this xD)

Well today I changed the CPU from an i5-2400, to an i5-3570K, just for an extra little boost. This was also pre-owned from CEX. This PC is barely a week old, and as mentioned, so far has only been used for the whole purpose I built it for. I say this because there is no way I would have gotten a virus this soon, and its also worth noting that I have done a full scan regardless and my anti-virus didn't find anything.

So this is where its weird! After booting up the PC after the CPU upgrade, a picture appeared on my monitor BEFORE the windows loading screen.
Its a picture of a new born baby sitting on a lap in a santa outfit. As far as I know, viruses can't infect hardware (except certain crashers which overload the CPU/GPU - though thats not really a virus). I've also never heard of a picture being saved onto a CPU either!?

I turned off my PC and rebooted and it came up again! I am completely lost as too how this has happened.
Is it a windows thing?
Is it a stock image linked to every i5-3570K?
Something to do with my motherboard?
I have no clue! And would like to remove this picture if I can.

Any idea on what is happening and how I can get rid of the image? Unfortunately I don't have a compatible Motherboard to test the new CPU in right now, but when the the i5-2400, is in the motherboard, this doesn't happen.

 

[Barty1884]

As far as I know, viruses can't infect hardware (except certain crashers which overload the CPU/GPU - though thats not really a virus).

You certainly can get a virus/malware that can inject itself into the BIOS etc.... So while not hardware, strictly, they're not something a wipe of your OS would fix.


In this case though, it sounds like a custom BIOS splash image.
Custom PC builders, Businesses etc can all have their own logo (typically) appear in place of (or addition to) board manufacturer's logos.

Typically, all that's involved is inserting the image/logo etc into a publicly available BIOS from the manufacturer's website & flashing it.
So to reverse the process, I would expect a 'flash' of the standard BIOS should do the trick.


An image cannot be 'saved' to a CPU, so this sounds like a symptom of your motherboard.
It was almost certainly there before the CPU swap, but may have been disabled in the BIOS. A CPU swap likely reset the BIOS, bringing it back.

 

[Dapplefrost]

You certainly can get a virus/malware that can inject itself into the BIOS etc.... So while not hardware, strictly, they're not something a wipe of your OS would fix.


In this case though, it sounds like a custom BIOS splash image.
Custom PC builders, Businesses etc can all have their own logo (typically) appear in place of (or addition to) board manufacturer's logos.

Typically, all that's involved is inserting the image/logo etc into a publicly available BIOS from the manufacturer's website & flashing it.
So to reverse the process, I would expect a 'flash' of the standard BIOS should do the trick.


An image cannot be 'saved' to a CPU, so this sounds like a symptom of your motherboard.
It was almost certainly there before the CPU swap, but may have been disabled in the BIOS. A CPU swap likely reset the BIOS, bringing it back.

As I said, I Didn't think an image could be saved or burned onto a CPU, so it was so weird to me!
What you said about the BIOS however, makes sense, so I will flash my BIOS and post my results for future in case it's something someone else has to do a google search for, aha

Thank you