[thankyouchurchlady]

...Wouldn't they ruin their own computers testing? I'm not a virus writer, or trying to learn how to be, I just can't imagine these people destroy dozens of computers for each virus, and software is software - it needs to be tested.

[Jeffrey T]

not sure, but good question

[Justin420]

Well, if you know what you're doing, you can do a reformat of your hard drive, and a reinstallation of your Operating System, in a few hours, give or take. It would be somewhat of a hassle, but doing that multiple times would be much more cost-efficient than buying new computers.Or, you could get a "re-imaging" or "ghosting" program, which effectively copies the file structure of one PC to another....keep one "master" pc, and just keep ghosting that image over to the virus-testing PC.(I work in a software company...which is why I know this.)

[TheAllKnowingFizz]

Big name viruses come from big name groups. Usually, these groups of underground computer virus authors have access to all sorts of hardware resources, including testing environments.The authors of such programs are also quite capable of quarentining the operation of the programs so the code does not adversely affect them.If you're more interested in running applications in a simulated environment, you might be interested in trying out VMWare, an application which lets you run a virtual computer on your machine. I believe the site is still www.vmware.com

[danielzaring]

As virus writers and hackers, these groups have simulated access environments where they can test and design their programs usually in dummy computers and after the attack they create a recovery disk to recover the data.