>>>>>
>>>>>It's worth noting that some very advanced malware persists even across disk wipes, by embedding itself either in the system BIOS or in the firmware of disk devices.
>>>>
>>>>What would you do in that case, Al?
>>>
>>>Flash the firmware for the drive (or replace it) and re-flash the BIOS.
>>
>>How do you re-flash the BIOS, Al?
>
>Today's motherboards have lots of stuff in the BIOS. My latest has a graphical representation of itself and when you hover a mouse over things on it, it says what's plugged in that place - which processor, memory, USB device (not too smart there, mostly says "generic"), microphone etc. For flashing, it has the option to have a new BIOS on a flash drive (not sure if there's a pun in there, or whether it was intentional) and there's an option in the BIOS menu to load itself from a file on that drive (and to backup itself first). You'd be surprised how developed this has become.

Some enthusiast/gaming mobos have so-called dual BIOS. The idea being the user can mess around with settings (mainly overclocking), and if they configure something that won't POST or boot they can use a mobo button (or maybe keyboard combo at boot?) and revert to a saved, "known good" configuration.