CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [106]
As an example, let’s say your machine has Award BIOS. You boot the system and press DEL to enter CMOS setup. The screen in Figure 7-14 appears. You are now in the Main menu of the Award CMOS setup program. The setup program itself is stored on the ROM chip, but it edits only the data on the CMOS chip.
If you select the Standard CMOS Features option, the Standard CMOS Features screen appears (Figure 7-15). On this screen you can change floppy drive and hard drive settings, as well as the system’s date and time. You will learn how to set up the CMOS for these devices in later chapters. At this point, your only goal is to understand CMOS and know how to access the CMOS setup on your PC, so don’t try to change anything yet.
Figure 7-14 Typical CMOS Main screen by Award
If you have a system that you are allowed to reboot, try accessing the CMOS setup now. Does it look anything like these examples? If not, can you find the screen that enables you to change the floppy and hard drives? Trust me, every CMOS setup has that screen somewhere! Figure 7-16 shows the same standard CMOS setup screen on a system with Phoenix BIOS. Note that this CMOS setup utility calls this screen “Main.”
The first BIOS was nothing more than this standard CMOS setup. Today, all computers have many extra CMOS settings. They control items such as memory management, password and booting options, diagnostic and error handling, and power management. The following section takes a quick tour of an Award CMOS setup program. Remember that your CMOS setup almost certainly looks at least a little different from mine, unless you happen to have the same BIOS. The chances of that happening are quite slim.
Figure 7-15 Standard CMOS Features screen
Figure 7-16 Phoenix BIOS CMOS setup utility Main screen
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NOTE All of these screens tend to overwhelm new techs. When they first encounter the many options, some techs feel they need to understand every option on every screen to configure CMOS properly. Relax—every new motherboard comes with settings that befuddle even the most experienced techs. If I don’t talk about a particular CMOS setting somewhere in this book, it’s probably not important, either to the CompTIA A+ certification exams or to a real tech.
Phoenix has virtually cornered the desktop PC BIOS market with its Award Modular BIOS. Motherboard makers buy a boilerplate BIOS, designed for a particular chipset, and add or remove options (Phoenix calls them modules) based on the needs of each motherboard. This means that seemingly identical CMOS setup utilities can be extremely different. Options that show up on one computer might be missing from another. Compare the older Award screen in Figure 7-17 with the more modern Award CMOS screen in Figure 7-14. Figure 7-17 looks different—and it should—as this much older system simply doesn’t need the extra options available on the newer system.
The next section starts the walkthrough of a CMOS setup utility with the SoftMenu, followed by some of the Advanced screens. Then you’ll go through other common screens, such as Integrated Peripherals, Power, and more.
Figure 7-17 Older Award setup screen
SoftMenu
You can use the SoftMenu to change the voltage and multiplier settings on the motherboard for the CPU from the defaults. Motherboards that cater to overclockers tend to have this option. Usually you just set this to Auto or Default and stay away from this screen (Figure 7-18).
Figure 7-18 SoftMenu
Advanced BIOS Features
Advanced BIOS Features is the dumping ground for all of the settings that aren’t covered in the Standard menu and don’t fit nicely under any other screen. This screen varies wildly from one system to the next. You most often use this screen to select the boot options (Figure 7-19).
Figure 7-19 Advanced BIOS Features
Chassis Intrusion Detection Many motherboards support the chassis intrusion detection feature provided by the