BIOS Setup Utility

Note: This tutorial applies to both Windows XP and Windows Vista as well as Windows 7.

This article on the BIOS Setup Utility is not intended to be a full explanation of all that the BIOS Utility can do. For our purposes, this tutorial will focus on getting into the BIOS Settings and changing the boot order.

A word of warning: unless you are very familiar with the settings in BIOS, do not make any changes beyond setting the boot order. Making the wrong change can render your PC unusable.

A General Explanation of the BIOS

There may come a time when you will need to access your computer's BIOS Setup Utility. BIOS stands for "Basic Input/Output System", and its purpose is to provide communication between the microprocessor (CPU) and the operating system files residing on the hard drive. It is actually the first program that runs when you first turn your PC on. Without it, your operating system would never load.

The BIOS also allows you to control your computer's hardware settings, boot device order, and other system settings.

When you first turn on your PC and it begins the boot process, you'll see the black screen with the white text which is a summary of your systems configuration. It is at this time that you will normally see a prompt that says something like "Press X to enter Setup", where X could be the F2 key (as in the picture below), the ESC key, the DEL key, or maybe a combination of keys like CTRL+ALT+ESC. Whatever the key is, you should keep pressing it until you see "Entering Setup" or the BIOS screen itself. If your PC begins to boot into Windows, then you have missed the prompt. You'll have to restart your PC again and look for the SETUP prompt.

BIOS Setup Utility

All BIOS utilities are a little different so yours may look like the one shown below or it may look completely different. No matter how your BIOS setup utility appears, they are all basically a set of menus containing many different settings for your computer's hardware.

BIOS Setup Utility

Once you have successfully entered the Setup Utility, you will most likely see some navigation commands on the main screen. Since you can't use your mouse in the BIOS Setup Utility, you'll need to use different key commands to navigate the screens and make changes. Most likely you will use the "arrow" keys to jump from one selection to another. As an example, using the instructions given for navigating around your BIOS utility, locate the option for changing the boot sequence.

What is the Boot sequence?

The Boot Sequence is the order in which the computer's BIOS searches the available disk drives for the operating system files. The default boot order is usually the floppy disk first (for computers that still have a floppy disk drive), then the hard drive, then the CD drive, then any USB drives, then the network boot, etc.

To change which device to boot from first, follow the directions on the BIOS setup utility screen and bring the CD drive up to the second boot position (if you have a floppy disk drive), or the first position if you don't have a floppy disk drive. If you have a floppy disk drive, you want make sure that it is above the hard drive in the boot order in case you need to use a boot floppy in an emergency to get your system to boot up.

To save your changes, follow the instructions given to you in your BIOS utility to navigate to the Exit or Save and Exit menu.Locate and choose the "Save Changes and Exit" (or similarly worded) option to save the changes you made to the boot order. Once you have chosen the Save and Exit option, your PC will then begin the boot process again and will boot into the Windows installation that you have on your hard drive unless you have a bootable floppy or CD disk installed.

I'll have more tutorials on using the BIOS Setup Utility as the need arises.

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