What is BIOS?

BIOS is a low level software, the first software to run when you power up the system. For a better understanding of what low level software means, you should know that the programs installed on your system, that you use daily, like your browser, media player, office suite are high level software because they interact with the operating system. The operating system is a mid level software because it interacts with hardware components through drivers and the BIOS. The BIOS is low level software because it directly controls the way hardware components work. The BIOS provides a number of services that allow users and higher level software to configure the settings for a computer's hardware components and to get direct information from those components. For example both the user and the software installed on a computer can learn the rotation speed of the coolers that are found in the computer case or the temperature of several components, including but not limited to the processor or the video card. The term BIOS is an acronym for Basic Input/Output System. You should think of it as the software that intermediates data transfers between the hardware components of a system and the user or the software installed on that system. read less

BIOS instructs the computer on how to perform a number of basic functions such as booting and keyboard control. BIOS is also used to identify and configure the hardware in a computer such as the hard drive, floppy drive, optical drive, CPU, memory, etc. BIOS contains a number of hardware configuration options that can be changed through the setup utility. Saving these changes and restarting the computer applies the changes to the BIOS and alters the way BIOS instructs the hardware to function. Here are some common things you can do in most BIOS systems: Change the Boot Order Load BIOS Setup Defaults Remove a BIOS Password Create a BIOS Password Change the Date and Time Change Floppy Drive Settings Change Hard Drive Settings Change CD/DVD/BD Drive Settings View Amount of Memory Installed Change the Boot Up NumLock Status Enable or Disable the Computer Logo Enable or Disable the Quick Power On Self Test (POST) Enable or Disable the CPU Internal Cache Enable or Disable the Caching of BIOS Change CPU Settings Change Memory Settings Change System Voltages Enable or Disable RAID Enable or Disable Onboard USB Enable or Disable Onboard IEEE1394 Enable or Disable Onboard Audio Enable or Disable Onboard Floppy Controller Enable or Disable Onboard Serial/Parallel Ports Enable or Disable ACPI Change the ACPI Suspend Type Change the Power Button Function Change Power-on Settings Change Which Display is Initialized First on Multi-Display Setups Reset Extended System Configuration Data (ESCD) Enable or Disable BIOS Control of System Resources Change Fan Speed Settings View CPU and System Temperatures View Fan Speeds View System Voltages read less