The Only BIOS Guide You’ll Need

I am a big fan of MaximumPC and earlier this month they have published the ultimate or probably the only BIOS guide you would every need.

The post is a series of around 9 articles which starts from explaining how to get inside the BIOS, the BIOS Main menu, the standard CMOS features, advanced BIOS features and all the details you need to know in the BIOS of computers.

An example of the guide are as follows:

Standard CMOS Features

Exactly as the name implies, this is where the standard settings are located, including the date, time, and drive configuration.

Date and Time: You shouldn’t need to configure the date and time more than once, but if it keeps getting knocked out of whack, it may be time to replace the CMOS battery. You can try leaving your PC on for an extended period of time to recharge the battery, but it’s cheap enough to replace outright and a new one should last for years. Check your motherboard manual for the type of battery it uses, which will probably be a CR2032.

IDE Channels: Here is where you’ll find what IDE drives you have connected to your PC. These are the ones that use those old school fat ribbon cables of yesteryear and require multiple drives on the same channel be configured as ‘Master’ and ‘Slave.’ Your drives should show up automatically, but if not, highlight the appropriate entry and hit the Enter key, which brings up another submenu.

- IDE HDD Auto-Detection: Use this to auto-detect a newly connected hard drive.
- Access Mode: Also known as the Translation Method, this setting relays the physical characteristics of your IDE drive to your system and how to define the disk size.

If you’re still not seeing your drive(s) show up, check that the jumper on the back has been properly configured and that you remembered to plug in a Molex power connector.

Image from MaximumPC.

Go ahead and read the article here — Ultimate BIOS Guide: Every Setting Decrypted and Explained!.