Spyware, viruses, & security forum: Possible BIOS Virus Infection?

I'm looking for some advice regarding what course of action to take. First the story:

I came home today and my computer booted up to the motherboard screen, but wouldn't go beyond it. After a little troubleshooting, I came to two seemingly likely solutions. A. My motherboard is fried. B. My HDD is dead. I was leaning more towards A considering there was no message indicating that it could not locate a boot device, and no beep codes or anything of that nature. So I decided to test it by plugging my HDD into my friends pc. Now his PC won't boot either, except his wont even produce an image on the monitor. I forgot to mention, that my computer seems to be frozen at the motherboard startup screen, as I cannot enter BIOS settings or anything else from there. I thought maybe it was because of my USB wired keyboard, but I tried it with a converter and plugged it into the old fashioned keyboard slot with the same result. I also used this keyboard to setup everything initially when I built this computer, so it should function.

So since the HDD appears to have killed my friends computer as well, I started considering the possibility that I had contracted a BIOS virus that spread from my HDD to his motherboards BIOS. Stupidly, I also plugged his original HDD back in and tried to boot to see if it would work, so I can only assume that is also infected. I tried removing the power cord from both computers, and removing the CMOS battery for about an hour, and after plugging it all back in, the results are the same. My motherboard did begin doing its usual start up beep after that though, but I still cannot access the BIOS menu. My friends computer is remains a black screen.

So my first question is basically do you think it's likely that I have a BIOS virus or are there other more likely explanations? I realize they are very rare, but at this point, all other explanations I can think of seem less likely.

And if I do, I am seeking advice on correcting it. I was considering just buying new motherboards and hdds, but I am worried that the virus may have spread to other hardware, such as the video card. I read that these types of viruses can hide themselves in the BIOS of multiple pieces of hardware, and I'd hate to replace the MB and HDD only to have it reinfected by the video card... there's not really any way I can think to test it without risking annihilating more hardware. And since my friends computer will no longer produce any video, I was thinking maybe his card had become infected then, and perhaps mine being newer had some type of defense against it, as I have read newer hardwares have been making efforts to prevent these kinds of attacks. The lack of video could also just be differences in how our motherboards are handling the infection though I suppose. Anyone have any thoughts on courses of action? I could always take it in somewhere and have professionals risk their equipment, but I'd hate to pay them just to tell me I need to buy new parts, considering I'm already going to likely be dishing out money for new parts -.-'