I'm curious about when you see computer viruses on film or tv they almost always end up causing pysical damage to the computer or leaving a hard disk smoking....

Is this a Myth???

As has been said many times before, the ignorance of scriptwriters is astounding. Either that, or their total contempt for the intelligence level of their assumed audience. Then again, nobody ever went bankrupt by underestimating the intelligence of the general public, something that politicians have always traded on.

Actually it is possible to fry the motherboard if you are able to program a good enough virus. It is even possible to create a virus that turns off your computers fan so that it will overheat...so technically it is possible to make a computer start smoking if you have the right programming ablilties.