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Viruses (in the strictest sense of the term)- perhaps, that depends on how MS handle x86 emulation (if at all).

Malware- definitely not. So long as shell scripting and other such interpreted code can still execute, malware can still be written. In fact with Office being ported to ARM, you instantly open up the problem that the same malicious VBA macros on x86 Office will work on ARM NT too. The same would be true for WSH, Powershell and even DHTML et al content. "

Also, if Windows NT and MS Office can both be recompiled for ARM, so too can any viruses or other malware also be recompiled for ARM.

Just about the only thing that needs to be retained (in order for Windows malware to still work on ARM) is that the OS API is still Windows. This means that the same source code can still be re-compiled for a different machine architecture.

That is probably exactly what Microsoft theselves did to make MS Offcie for ARM.

In the short term Windows on ARM won't have any malware, but if Windows on ARM reaches significant usage numbers, Windows malware for ARM will very soon also start to appear.

The essential features for malware are that: (1) the API must be consistent (so that source code can be recompiled), and (2) trade secret source code with binary only executables which are routinely distributed and installed by end users.

Windows for ARM will faithfully retain those two essential elements from Windows for x86.

Edited 2011-01-06 09:31 UTC