Can Mac computers get viruses through booting into Windows XP?

Question

I know that Macs are supposedly virus-free, but I also know that many viruses, trojans and forms of spyware exist for windows. Now that intel Macs can boot Windows XP, are they prone to these viruses? If that is possible, would the viruses affect the computer only when running XP, or would OS X also be affected? This might be a very stupid question.

Answer 1

if you share directory with write access, your windows viruses will infect/affect the mac files too!

while running os x, you can't spawn viruses, but you can copy them around!

if you run both... keep the windows out of the mac directories!

Answer 2

While you are booted into Windows, you are equally as vulnerable whether that copy of Windows is running on a Mac or a PC. Any malware you get while running Windows will only affect the partition that Windows is running in. OS X will be unaffected. If your Windows partition is formatted Fat32, you can read and write to those files from OS X, so files (such as Word docs) you may want to get to could become corrupted and will be just as corrupted when you try to use them OS X. If your Windows partition is formatted NTFS, you can read (but not write) those files, and the same applies, although you are less likely to care since you can't modify any of the files.

Windows has no idea what to do with HFS+ formatted partitions, which is what OS X is running on. Windows cannot read or write to those files without additional software. If you want to be safe, don't get such additional software.

Answer 3

Macs can get viruses windows xp is risky and it is very easy to get a virus on xp.
But most windows programs do not run on mac.
But some viruses delete files so it can delete files on the mac hard drive if it finds it.

Answer 4

Windows and OSX are completely different systems.
Windows programs including trojans and viruses just
don't work in OSX. So booting into a totally infected
windows would not affect OSX other than damaged
files remaining damaged. I.e if a virus destroyed an
office document that document won't magically work
in OSX.

Answer 5

attempt to seek around usenet/p2p/ Bittorrent and fantastic ERD (emergency restoration disk) with the help of wininternals. Boot with the cd and have have get right of entry to to mount the registry and restore it. the different decision you could desire to to slave the hd to a solid workstation and save the report to a distinctive stress. (make advantageous that the working workstation has up2date virus test and its enabled)