Beginners guide to the bios

Stay away from messing with the bios, you can cause unrecoverable problems.

The manufacturer will NOT accept responsibility

It will invalidate your warranty

Beginners guide to the bios Basic input/output system bios for short. This motherboard chip provides the motherboard with the information it needs to control things like, the graphics card/chip , sound card , dvd player/recorder and other hardware plugged into your computer. The manufacturer programs this chip at the production stage. Tips on when to update the BIOS or NOT Example : if some new hardware you wish to install is so new that the manufacturer could not have foreseen it's development at the time your machine was manufactured. Example: Your computer is say three years old, and a new blueray recorder has been designed after your machine was produced, then it's possible that your manufacturer has issued an update for your BIOS. Other than a known manufacturing problem then it's wise to stay away from the bios you can cause unrecoverable problems messing around.

 

EVERYTHING ELSE NEEDS TO BE TO BE CONSIDERED FIRST, WAY BEFORE YOU TAMPER WITH THE "bios"

Many Members have altered the BIOS when the problems are harddrive and software related

 

BIOS can be tricky, if you are a beginner then having a technician nearby can help to guide you through the practical. Do not mess up your BIOS as it is hard to restore if you do not know what you are doing.

 

Remember to know exactly what you are doing before you mess with it. If you accidentally overclock something, or change an important setting, kiss goodbye to your computer.

 

I have never dared to temper with the BIOS, I'm just a newb who knows almost nothing about hardware! I'd never date to tamper with the BIOS, but must admit those bits of info are very interesting. When I was younger I wanted to take a course to learn how to repair computers and laptops, then maybe go for an engineering in hardware. Sadly I didn't manage to go for it, but who says I can't do it in the future?

 

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It's unfortunately not like the old days when everyone using a computer was a systems engineer, programmer, hardware developer, or blend of the 3 in computer science. Now it's "mobile" and "apps" and things that have become so watered down that you really DO have to say this and let people know.

The BIOS is the first and last level of user-mode access to the hardware. It's the first, because it's the first layer to it. But it will be the last if you manage to brick it. On some motherboards you can still replace the BIOS if you have an externalized firmware, but that's not always possible and the same users who might brick their machine are not going to be able to service or repair it at that level until they know more and are serious about teaching themselves more up to that point.

There is more that can be done to the BIOS than this, though. There are safeguards that prevent overheating and physically turn the computer off to prevent damage to the motherboard, ram, processor, and peripherals attached. If a user goes and modifies those without realizing what they are doing, they can potentially damage any and all of those, start fires, and worse.

Many of those safety features did not exist years ago, but had to be added to ensure safety to the more casual users as computers became more mainstream and a fixture of the public likened to a type of appliance rather than a serious machine and sensitive electronic device.

As mentioned, many of the issues and errors that occur are not bios-related at all. The few that are can often be cleared by removing a CMOS battery and do not require user intervention (most times) even when returned to factory defaults the moment it's put back in.

If a user wants to experiment with the BIOS of a machine, they should either do it with a simulator, or use an older machine that, if bricked, is a system they can write-off, not worry about, or afford to lose for the sake of the experimentation only. Do not experiment with your main computer's BIOS, especially if it is your only machine, and ESPECIALLY if you have data on the system that you have not saved and need to. I have seen surges take out hard drives terribly, and that's the last thing you ever want to happen on top of losing the motherboard and anything else attached to a laptop or desktop.

Be careful!

 

It's kind of funny how a post about a guide to the BIOS would mostly be about the risk of accessing the BIOS. On the other hand, it's pretty justified. I went with what IBMPC8088 had said and bought an expendable computer just for experiments like accessing the BIOS. In my case, I tweaked the BIOS for the purpose of installing an operating system in a computer with no previous operating system. Sometimes, people simply have to access the BIOS for whatever reason they have. For those times, more detailed tips could come in handy.

First, the term BIOS could mean a Legacy BIOS or it's replacement, UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface). Computers with just a Legacy boot BIOS will usually be the older ones while newer computers will have the UEFI boot and the Legacy boot. As a newbie, they were basically the same thing for me until they were not. For UEFI devices like the one I experimented with, there was an option to change it into the Legacy BIOS, which was required to install a new operating system.

 

I'm not a technical person but bear with me. When the USB socket emerged sometime in 1999, my husband was given a free sample by the vendor. The tech in the office came to our house to install the USB in our home computer - an 80386 running on DOS. But the tech was not able to install the USB socket because I remember him saying the BIOS was not compliant.

For purposes of argument, if the BIOS of our old home computer was upgraded to include USB access, it can probably handle the USB socket. Am I right on that?

 

I would read up on how to set up your bios before thinking of messing around with them. Normally you don't have to touch them. I have built up a some computers so when I bought my most recent laptop and had to upgrade my firmware because the virtual option of the CPU was active it wasn't to much of a problem, but I wouldn't recommend anyone do it unless they have some tech knowledge.