Your computer's Bios explained

The Bios is made up of a number of screens, which can be accessed through the menu on the opening screen. This screen generally also has instructions for how to navigate around, so as we said earlier, take the time to read everything through and proceed only once you know what is going on.

Now that we’ve got into the Bios, it’s worth looking at what can be done with it. The most useful control is something called Power-on self-test, or Post.

When a computer first powers up, the Bios tests all of the components. This is useful, but it can mean that the computer takes ages to boot. In reality, modern hardware is pretty reliable, so it’s possible to make Post quicker by cutting down on the number of devices it tests, or the depths to which they are tested.

Explore the options if there is a menu for controlling Post in your computer’s Bios. The Bios we used for writing this article allowed us to set whether the boot-time diagnostic screen was displayed or not. This screen shows which bits of hardware – in our case memory – are being checked, and whether or not they have passed.

Shorter or fewer tests will make for a shorter boot time, but will also mean that if there is a problem with the computer, it will be more difficult to diagnose. Luckily, it’s easy to change back to a default Bios setup. With the Bios we were using, hitting F9 returned the system to the default setup.

Perhaps the handiest tool in the Bios arsenal is the ability to password-protect your computer from the very first moments of the start-up process. After all, anyone wanting to fire up your computer without authorisation will have a bit of a problem if they can’t even start up Windows.

It is worth mentioning, though, that Bios passwords can be circumvented by removing the hard disk and putting it in another PC. Also, should you forget your Bios password, you may well end up with a very expensive piece of useless equipment on your desk.

That said, if you are willing to take that risk, it’s worth a go. Using the Insyde Bios, we selected ‘Startup’ from the menu, and hit Enter. We chose the option marked ‘Set Admin password’, and entered a new password twice. After choosing Save and Exit, the computer prompted us for the password whenever it was turned on.

The Bios usually only sets a short password – in our case eight letters long.

Another good setting to look at is the boot process – this part of the Bios controls which devices the PC checks to look for an operating system as it starts up.

Computers can run an operating system from USB memory sticks, floppy drives, CDs, DVDs and, of course, the more traditional hard disk.

Forcing the Bios to look for its operating system somewhere other than the hard disk can be invaluable if Windows freezes during start-up, or a hard disk fault is suspected. Using our Bios, we were able to exclude FireWire hard disks and USB CD-Roms from our boot process.

The risk here is that if something went wrong, we wouldn’t be able to boot from an operating system on either of these devices.

It’s also possible to change the order of preference for the devices selected. We set ours to first look for an operating system on the DVD drive, and then on the hard disk.

At the beginning of this article we mentioned the option of adding hard disks to the boot process – along with the fact that it can sometimes be a tricky issue. Fortunately, in the Bios we were using, we were able to go to the Boot menu, pick out the disk we had connected up, and add it to the boot process, all without any problems.