Configure The BIOS

Now, your new PC should be up and running and you should be staring at the BIOS setup screen.

Your next step is to make sure your BIOS is using the proper settings. While some users like to use the BIOS to tweak the system into running like greased soap, during an initial build, it is best to keep settings conservative, which usually means leaving them at their defaults. In this case, not a whole lot really needs to be done in the BIOS for sake of completing this process. I will, though, go through some of the common settings and point out what needs to be done and some common settings for them, at least to serve out purposes here. Please bear in mind that this serves as an outline. Your actual settings and names may vary for different BIOS versions.

When you first enter the BIOS, and where you probably are at this point in the tutorial, you will see the main menu. It will list two columns (usually) of sections of your BIOS which have different settings in them, an example of which is to the right.

Standard CMOS Setup

This section just controls some of the basic stuff. Make sure the time and date is correct. Make sure your floppy drive setup is correct (usually 1.44M, 3.5 in.). Video will stay set at VGA/EGA. The HALT ON settings controls what the PC will stop booting on, and it does not usually need to be changed. Some BIOS versions contain the IDE auto-detection in this section, and it is important for you to do this before you move on. If this section does not have it, then it will be its own menu item in the BIOS. Regardless, go ahead and perform your auto-detection now. An auto-detection will scan all four IDE drive positions whether there is a drive there or not. If there is a drive there and that drive is properly connected, the BIOS will offer you three choices to choose from. Usually the one offered by the BIOS is correct, but you can choose one of the other two. As the BIOS tries to detect non-existent drives, you can just wait for it or pressing to skip it. In the very rare cases, you may need to manually enter the hard drive information to make it work. Usually, you would put the drive specification into USER mode and them specify each field based on the information given to you about the drive.

Advanced BIOS Features

This section controls some of basic operating settings of your PC. For example, you will enable/disable things such as on-board cache, determine the boot device, etc. Here are some of the common settings:

Virus Protection/Warning: Will scan your hard drive boot sector on startup for viruses and alarm you if anything attempts to write to the boot sector. Enable for increased security, but disable to avoid the annoyance.
Cache Settings: These settings control L1 and L2 cache, which in most newer systems resides on the processor itself. In almost all cases, this is enabled and should be. If there is an option to have ECC error checking on the L2 cache, go ahead and have it enabled.
Quick POST: This will allow the BIOS to skip some tests such as the memory test on boot-up, thus allowing the PC to boot faster. You can enable it for the sake of thoroughness, and this is fine is you leave you PC on most of the time. But, if you turn it on a lot, this is an annoyance and I’d recommend enabling Quick POST.
Boot Sequence: This controls the order in which the PC looks at the drives for bootable information. Sometimes the BIOS will have one fields for this and you scroll through the options. Other versions have separate settings for “First Boot Device”, “Second Boot Device” and so on. I recommend having the A drive be first, and you will need it to be so for this tutorial. The hard drive is second. If you will be using your CD-ROM as a boot device, you can set that up here.
Swap Floppy Drive: Allows you to control the assigning of the A and B drive letters to your floppy drives by swapping the order that is dictated by the twist in the floppy drive ribbon cable. Most of the time this is disabled.
Fast A20 Gate: The gate A20 is a device used for addressing memory above the 1 MByte mark (don’t really want to get into that here). This used to be controlled by the keyboard via a pin. Keyboards still play a role in this today, but you control it via the BIOS. Some BIOS have enable/disable, some have Normal/Fast. I would go ahead and leave it at the default.
Typematic Rate Settings: These options control the rate at which holding down a key on the keyboard will produce characters on screen. Just leave it disabled as it isn’t very important.
Boot Numlock: Enable to have Numlock on when you start the computer.
CPU Serial Number: Enables or disables the serial number thingie in Intel CPUs. Privacy buffs, disable it.
Security Option: - Some systems have an option to require a password every time the system boots up. You’ll probably want this disabled.
Video BIOS Shadow: - Disable or default.
Advanced Chipset Features

This area of the BIOS allows you to control certain aspects of your motherboard which are specific to the chipset on your board. This would include bus speeds and memory issues. Most of the time, you don’t need to worry about anything in here for the sake of this tutorial. But, a general outline:

Chipset Special Features: Disable. Not all BIOS have this.
L2 Cache size: If this option exists, set it to match the size of your external cache.
DRAM Parity Checking: Enable only if using parity memory
Dram parity/ECC mode: "Parity" if using parity memory, "ECC" if using ECC memory
DRAM Clock Control: This area allows you to control the speed of the memory. On Via chipsets, it will usually also display the processor bus speed and the DRAM bus speed, allowing you to set the memory to operate on the Host Clock or BY SPEED. You can set the memory speed manually or have it run at the same speed as the system bus. If you are using SDRAM, you can also control the CAS latency, which is usually best left at default unless you’re a real tweaker.
AGP Mode: Controls the AGP Mode, such as 1X, 2X or 4X. Set to Auto if available, or whatever it is set to already.
AGP Aperture: Controls how much of the PCI memory address range will be dedicated to graphics memory space. Usually, 64MB is fine, but you can set it to whatever you want.
DRAM Frequency: Set to the speed of your memory (66, 100, 133, etc.)
You will likely have many other options in this section such as cacheable RAM options, PCI wait states and bus control options. This stuff is usually left alone and should not need to be adjusted to get a PC working well.
Power Management

This section should be fairly straight-forward to even the novice user, and you should be able to use your manual to best describe the settings. I typically disable almost everything in this section, and you should for now, too. You’re just trying to get the PC working at this point, not fine-tuning every little aspect of the BIOS.

Integrated Peripherals

In this section, the important part for now will be to enable or disable the various ports you may be using. Make sure the IDE ports are enabled if you are using both. For the IDE devices, your BIOS may offer various speed options such as setting the PIO mode of the hard drives of enabling IDE pre-fetch or UDMA-100. Set these options to AUTO where possible. You can enable pre-fetch on IDE only if your IDE interface supports it, which if you have the option, it likely does. It will speed up data access some. If your board has integrated hardware such as video, sound or networking hardware, you will enable or disable here if it is not controlled by a jumper. Enable if you wish. If you’re using expansion card hardware and your board has these options, disable them to allow usage of the cards. You can also enable/disable things such as your USB port, serial/parallel ports. You’ll probably want them enabled. Set the parallel port mode to ECP or EPP or both. If you have an IDE HDD Block Mode settings, enable this if your hard drive supports it (most newer drives do). For the other settings, just leave them at their default values.

PnP/PCI Configuration

This section controls some of the various aspects of plug and play and the PCI bus. Much of it will not need to be touched at this point, but a couple item bear mentioning:

PnP OS Installed: Since most likely you will be running an operating system that is plug-n-play compatible, set this option to Yes.
Reset Configuration Data: This field should normally be set to disabled. But, you can enable it to reset your Extended System Configuration Data (ESCD) when you exit BIOS setup. This may be useful to you if you add new hardware or software and the system reconfiguration caused a serious error that rendered your OS un-bootable.
Your other options should be left at default.
PC Health

This might be caused by a bunch of different names, but it is the section of the BIOS (if it has it) that monitors things like fan speed, CPU temperature, voltage levels, etc. You may also be able to set a shut down temperature, so if the CPU gets way too hot, the system would shut itself down for safety.

SoftMenu / Frequency-Voltage Control

If you are using a “jumperless” motherboard, you will have a section of this nature which allows you to control the CPU settings and maybe a few other things. It will allow you to set the minute voltages to the processor, select the CPU multiplier, voltages to your DDR memory (if you are using it) and the system bus speed. Most of these options have an AUTO or default value, and this is fine for most people. The settings may already be set fine. But, you can use this to overclock the system if you choose (not recommended right now).

Defaults

Many BIOS versions have pre-set sets of default values which you can pre-load. Some have “fail-safe” defaults and “optimized” defaults. If you don’t wish to mess with any of the above, you can use these options to set the BIOS info up to certain sets of settings in one or two button clicks.

Passwords

Most BIOS versions have security options to allow for user or supervisor passwords. Most people do not use them. But, if you do, just make sure you record the password. If you lose it, you’ll have to reset your whole BIOS to get your system back.

Save and Exit the BIOS setup program. This will reboot the machine. Make sure your system disk is still in Drive A:.