Specifications

CHAPTER 3

150

All About Motherboards

CONFIGURING THE MOTHERBOARD USING BIOS SETUP

The motherboard conﬁguration stored in BIOS setup does not normally need to be changed

except, for example, when there is a problem with hardware, a new ﬂoppy drive is installed,

or a power-saving feature needs to be disabled or enabled. The BIOS setup can also hold

one or two power-on passwords to help secure a system. Know that these passwords are not

the same password that can be required by a Windows OS at startup. In this part of the

chapter, you’ll learn how to access and use the BIOS setup program. Earlier in the chapter,

you saw listed most BIOS settings in Table 3-5.

ACCESSING THE BIOS SETUP PROGRAM

You access the BIOS setup program by pressing a key or combination of keys during the boot

process. The exact way to enter setup varies from one motherboard manufacturer to another.

Table 3-9 lists the keystrokes needed to access BIOS setup for some common BIOS types.

Front audio header

Three USB headers

(B)(A)

Figure 3-58 Connectors for front panel ports

Courtesy: Course Technology/Cengage Learning

A+ Exam Tip

The A+ 220-702 Practical Application exam expects you to know how to change

advanced BIOS settings.

AMI BIOS Del

Award BIOS Del

Older Phoenix BIOS Ctrl+Alt+Esc or Ctrl+Alt+s

Newer Phoenix BIOS F2 or F1

Dell computers using Phoenix BIOS Ctrl+Alt+Enter

Compaq computers such as the ProLinea, Press the F10 key while the cursor is in the

Deskpro, Deskpro XL, Deskpro XE, or Presario upper-right corner of the screen, which happens

just after the two beeps during booting.*

*For Compaq computers, the BIOS setup program is stored on the hard drive in a small, non-DOS partition of about

3 MB. If this partition becomes corrupted, you must run setup from a bootable CD or ﬂoppy disk that comes with the

system. If you cannot run setup by pressing F10 at startup, suspect a damaged partition or a virus taking up space

in memory.

BIOS Key to Press During POST to Access Setup

Table 3-9 How to access BIOS setup

A+

220-702

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