BOOT CAMP 134

BEGINNERS GUIDE TO BIOS – part 2

Last week in Boot Camp we looked at what the BIOS program on your PC does, this week we’ll be going inside and possibly carrying out a few simple tweaks.

As we pointed out last week the BIOS is a powerful configuration program so please do not touch anything unless you know what are doing and are prepared to accept the consequences. Also, as is customary on these occasions, we cannot take any responsibility for anything that goes wrong, so consider yourselves duly warned!

With that in mind the first thing you might want to do is make a record of your BIOS settings. Boot up your PC to the ‘Setup’ menu using the keystrokes that appear on the opening screen and switch on your printer. The items we’re interested in are variously labelled ‘Standard CMOS setup’, ‘Advanced CMOS Setup’, ‘BIOS Features’, ‘Chipset Features’, ‘Peripherals Setup’, ‘Integrated Peripherals’ and ‘Power Management’. The precise wording may be different and you can ignore anything to do with passwords, auto configuration and saving or exiting setup at this stage.

Select each item in turn with the arrow up down keys and press Return, and when the menu appears press the Print Screen key. All being well your printer will leap into action and print the contents of each page. If for any reason you can’t get a printout copy the information by hand, take a photograph, video the screens with a camcorder, or use a BIOS ‘viewer’ utility like System Analyser. A trial version can be downloaded from: www.tweakfiles.net/diagnostic/systemanalyser.html

If you get into trouble and haven’t got a record of your PC’s BIOS you can usually restore some sort of order by using the default settings or auto-configuration utility on the menu, (i.e. ‘Load Setup Defaults’ or ‘Auto Configuration with Fail-Safe Settings’ etc). One last piece of advice, if you do feel inspired to make alterations only change one thing at a time. Exit the BIOS after saving each change and boot to Windows, to make sure that everything is still working properly.

Now that’s out of the way our first port of call is the Standard CMOS Setup menu, which is usually the first item on the menu. This contains the adjustment for the PC’s internal clock and calendar, change if necessary using the keyboard’s arrow and page up/page down keys. Note that this is not the same as the Windows Time and Date settings, which gets its information from the CMOS clock, so if that’s wrong, the Windows clock will be wrong as well. You should also see information about your PC’s disc drives, though these days most BIOS’s use automatic settings so there may not be much actual data on display. This page should report on your PC’s RAM memory and there may be an option to change the colour of the BIOS menus (usually by pressing F2 on Award and Ami BIOS’s). When you’ve finished press the Esc key to return to the main menu and select the next item, which is normally Advanced CMOS or BIOS Features Setup.

It probably looks a bit intimidating but don’t worry, most of it is to do with motherboard configuration and needn’t concern us here. On some BIOS’s you get a short explanation of what each item does when it’s highlighted, or there may be a Help facility (usually F1) but if you want to know more there are plenty of books on the subject, including the seminal work, The BIOS Companion by Phil Croucher.

Most of the settings you should leave well alone, in any case they are likely to be the factory defaults, unless your PC was specially built or configured, but one item you might feel like changing is ‘Boot up Num Lock’, which decides whether or not the keyboard’s numeric pad is enabled at switch on. Another one is Boot Up Sequence. This determines the order of the disc drives your PC accesses to look for system files when it boots up. The default is usually A:, C:, CD-ROM but if you change it to C:, A: etc., boot up may be a little quicker, and you can leave a floppy disc in the drive.  Just remember to changed back to A:, C:, if the PC ever fails to boot, so you can use your emergency recovery disc (ERD).

Tucked away on the list you may see a Password or Security option. By default it’s usually set to ‘Setup’ which means you can password protect the BIOS menu, but if you change it to ‘System’ this will stop the boot-up process until the correct password is entered. To create a password, go back to the main menu and select the User Password option (if you also set up the Supervisor Password you’ll protect the BIOS as well). This offers a high degree of protection because it prevents Windows from loading so there’s no easy way to ‘hack’ into the machine, just make sure you remember your password!

Next is the Peripherals Setup or Integrated Peripherals setup menu, look for ‘Printer Port’ or ‘LPT1’. Most BIOS’s default to a ‘standard’ or ‘normal’ setting for data transfer through the printer port, which is safe but slow and can cause problems with some recent peripherals that share the printer port. Changing the setting to ECP or EPP (or ECP + EPP on some BIOS’s) may solve current or future compatibility problems and yield a small improvement in printer performance; it’s certainly worth trying. You should be warned of any conflicts when you exit the BIOS and boot to Windows.

Our final stop is the Power Management menu. This is an important one with settings that decide how your PC behaves when it’s not being used. It’s usually a good idea to play safe and use Windows Advanced Power Management (Start > Settings > Control Panel); the BIOS options are very detailed and really only for experts. Nevertheless there may be one or two things you might want to have a look at. Power Switch or Power Button changes how the PC’s on/off switch works (Instant Off, Off After 4 Seconds etc, manual off, etc.) and there may be an option to disable the facility that switches the PC on when the phone rings (Power on Modem Action), which some users find incredibly annoying.

Next week – Setting up a web cam

JARGON FILTER

ECP/EPP

Extended Capabilities Port/Enhanced Parallel Port; printer port settings that allow faster data transfer rates

ERD

Emergency recovery disc, a floppy disc containing important system files that can be used to boot your PC in the event of the system files on the hard disc being corrupted

LPT1

Line PrinTer, another name for a PC’s parallel printer port

TOP TIP

Here’s another one of those ‘Easter Eggs’, novelty features hidden away inside applications and operating systems by playful, bored or vengeful programmers. Occasionally they are witty or clever, some are cast lists of the people who worked on the project but this one is just plain weird… It works in Internet Explorer, versions 4 and 5, in the Address line type the following: ‘about:Mozilla’ (without the inverted commas but don’t forget the colon), and see what happens.

This looks like a bit of mischief on the part of Microsoft programmers since Mozilla is a rival ‘open source’ Internet browser program but if anyone has a better explanation or knows anything more we’d be mildly interested to find out.