That is the best protection from boot viruses. CMOS memory cannot be executed and cannot be infected by viruses. In this case usually the computer cannot boot, of produce strange messages. The ability of an antivirus program to determine that a virus is present, without naming the virus. For example integrity checkers can recognize that file is infected by a virus, but usually cannot name it.
Names can differ from one antivirus program to another.
Accurate recognition allows successful disinfection and is a must for scanners. Typical case is detection of macro viruses by F-prot. In case of file virus false positives disinfection will fail and can even damage the file. Badly written scanners also detect false positibes in memory. All virus scanners check RAM each time they start execution, but sofistication of that checking vaty gratly.