BIOS, for Basic Input Output System, is this little piece of program that allows your computer to provide functions such as booting the machine or the detection of various components connected to your motherboard, as the graphics card, your keyboard or mouse.
But it may contain a range of options and features much more complex, turning around the overclocking or setting up a RAID stack, among other things. That is why we decided to develop this guide you will learn more about this aspect of your computer.
Summary:
System Information
Devices
Processor and memory
Some other commands
There are three major manufacturers, American Megatrends, Award and Phoenix, first two are less present on your motherboard that the . Free projects are also being renovated as Coreboot and we are not talking about the two historical BIOS for PowerPC as PREP and CHRP. In addition, each manufacturer of the motherboard can also change the BIOS. Finally, some options are highly dependent on the material used, particularly CPU and RAM. All this implies the existence of a large number of different versions and we could therefore not giving every detail. That's why you may find this guide features which do not always cover your motherboard.
Navigating a BIOS :
Ways to achieve differ depending on the BIOS manufacturer of your motherboard. So you will be most often use the F2 or Delete. At Gigabyte, there has been little mention of a BIOS 'advanced', actually a way to hide the most sensitive options, which are activated via the shortcut CRTL + F1. Similarly, some manufacturers provide a combination of buttons dedicated to a utility to update the BIOS, but this is beyond our purpose.
Navigation in the BIOS is a much more homogeneous, the controls are practically the same from one manufacturer to another, from one motherboard to another.
To change an option: + / --
Access through: F1
Getting around in the menus: Arrows
To save the configuration and restart: F10
To load the settings without failure: F8 (Fail-Safe Defaults)
To choose the optimized parameters: F6 (Optimized Defaults)
Finally, to exit the BIOS, a menu or a sub-menu: ESC
Some precautions :
The first advice is simply to restore the factory settings in your BIOS. You can do this to remove the battery from your motherboard a few moments to restore the default settings. Some recent motherboards are also equipped with a dedicated button, available on the motherboard or on the back of it, next to the connector. For older cards, it also remains the possibility to play with the positioning of a jumper (jumper). You can find this information in the manual of your motherboard. Note that it is obviously advisable to carry out these manipulations in which previously put off the computer.
Alternatively, use the functions provided for this purpose within your BIOS. On those type of Phoenix, you should use the F9 key to restore the default constructor. Of the type Award BIOS, pressing the F5 key restores the previous settings, pressing F6 restores the default values and the F7 key allows to restore the default settings provided by the manufacturer of the motherboard.
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