Although U.S.-based antivirus sites reported little disruption from the April 26 outbreak of the CIH/Chernobyl virus, the rougue code struck with a vengeance in some areas of Asia and Europe.

The destructive computer virus slammed South Korea and Turkey on Monday - crashing more than a half a million computers by reformatting hard drives and, in some cases, zapping a key chip on the computers' motherboards.

The virus, believed by anti-virus software firms to have originated in Taiwan, infects computers running Windows 95 and 98 when a previously infected executable file - one with the .EXE extension - is run.

The CIH activates only on specific dates. Two variants of the virus struck on Monday: The more widespread version strikes every April 26, while the less common strain strikes on the 26th day of every month. The April variant is also known as the Chernobyl virus because its activation date is the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union.

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