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BIOS: Advanced and Hidden Options

There are other options that would make your PC faster or at least boot up faster. But, these options will vary from motherboard to motherboard, so don't expect all of them to be available to you. They might even be named differently. Check your motherboard's manual to see what BIOS options are available (and their values). Some options will take affect immediately, some are just safeguards or additional configuration options. So, i recommend you to test these options one at a time and see whether or not they will work for you. If not, change them back to their default values (or the value you that still works for you). We'll discuss them per menu item.

Standard CMOS Features

Open up the Primary / Secondary IDE options. If you're using IDE devices (such as ATA hard drives and CD / DVD-ROMs), they will be configured here. Most of the options will be automatically configured for you, but sometimes there's an additional 'Use 32 bit addressing' or something like that. Set this to 'On' for modern drives (basically any hard drive above 4 GBs).

If you're not using a floppy drive, turn off the floppy drive options. This way, Windows will not detect them and would not search for them. But, if you're going to use RAID arrays (either IDE, SCSI or S-ATA) and planning to install Windows on these arrays, leave them to their default values. You'll probably need to install the drivers (when installing) with a floppy disk.

Advanced BIOS Features

You would want the 'Quick Boot' option to be enabled. This will save time when booting by bypassing redundant checks of your memory. For those of you who likes fancy graphics, you could turn on the 'Full Screen Logo' option, but i personally set them to off. That way, i could still see information about the processor and memory when booting up.

There are many options you could choose in 'Boot Sequence', remember to choose the device from which you will be booting from (usually this means the hard drive that stores your operating system). It's best to put the operating system hard drive first and then other devices, I usually set them in this order: hard drive, CD-ROM and floppy. For those using RAID controllers and arrays, choose the SCSI option. This will enable you to boot from the RAID array you specified. By default S-ATA devices and arrays is also included here.

Turn on the 'S.M.A.R.T' option. While this slightly affects your performance, this feature will enable you to monitor the health of your hard drives. Using a S.M.A.R.T aware software utility, you will be able to know when your drives starts to fail and make the necessary process of backing up your data. Better safe than sorry, right?

Set the floppy drive seek to 'off'. This will save time when booting up and is necessary if you do not have any floppy drives. And of course, always set 'Use CPU Internal Cache' to on, since setting this to off will slow your PC considerably. You could leave the other options to their default setting.

Advanced Chipset Features

There may be sub-menus here, but we will discuss them all in this paragraph. Usually these sub-menus manages memory and AGP configurations. For the memory sub-menu, choose 'SPD' for the memory timing and speed (frequency). Like we've said before, this is the safest option. Leave the other settings alone for now. For the AGP sub-menu, just choose 'Yes' or 'On' for options that offer 'Yes / No' or 'On / Off'. There is an exception though, for motherboards using the VIA chipset, its better to leave the 'AGP Fast Write' to 'Off'. It's safer and it really doesn't offer much performance setting this to 'On'. You could just choose 'Auto' for the AGP mode to let the motherboard detects the mode that's appropriate for your graphics card. In the root "Advanced Chipset' menu, you might find an option that says 'PCI Delay Transaction' - set this to 'On'.

Power Management Features

You should leave alone most of the options here. There are some you probably want to check out. Make sure the 'ACPI' or in some motherboards 'IPCA' is set to 'On', do the same with the option 'Advanced Power Management'. If you're like me and prefer to leave your PC on all the time, you probably wouldn't want your hard drive(s) to rest - or suspend - so make sure the 'Hard drive Suspend Time' is set to '0' or 'Never'. Those more concerned with power management will be happier with it set to '30 minutes' or more. Now, for safety reasons, if there's an option for 'CPU Critical Temperature', set this as low as you can - usually 50 or 60 degrees Celsius. When your processor hits that temperature, your PC will automatically shutdown itself. If your processor is hotter than that, you either might want to set this higher or more probably, check the fan / heatsink of your processor.

PnP / PCI configuration

There are generally three options you want to check out here. The first is the 'Plug and Play OS support' - make sure this is on. That way, your operating system can manage the resources of your motherboard. Set the 'PCI Latency Timer' as low as possible and make sure (if your using ATA hard drives and CD / DVD-ROMs) to set the 'PCI IDE Busmaster' to 'On'.

PC Health Status

In some cases, the 'CPU Critical Temperature' option will be shown here. So, apply the values you'd like for it. An option that can be beneficial but also a nuisance is the 'CPU Fan Detection'. It's a good idea really, if somehow your fan stops working, your PC will shutdown automatically. Set this to 'On' if you're using an ordinary fan / heatsink to cool your processor. If you're using a fan that can not be monitored / detected or draws power directly from the power supply, set this to 'Off.

After you've done all this, restart your PC (exiting the BIOS screen will automatically do it for you). Remember to save before you exit. If your PC still shows the BIOS screen after restarting, you've just successfully configured your motherboard. If it doesn't, then you will have to bypass or clear the CMOS to reset the options you've changed.

Since you've already sure that your PC is working fine, you could now put it inside the casing. Follow the instructions bundled with the motherboard or casing. Once you have finished installing the peripherals, cables and connectors, do another dry run just to make sure you have installed them correctly.

Installing Storage

OK, now we're finally ready for the next step and complete your PC. We've already installed and configured the main components of your new PC (the processor, memory, graphics card and motherboard). Of course, these parts don't really do anything at this point: we still need to install the operating system and applications. So, we need a component to store the operating system and applications (a hard drive), and another component as the installation source (usually a CD / DVD-ROM). We will install both of them - now turn off your PC and prepare the hard drive and CD / DVD-ROM.

Most motherboards nowadays offer built in IDE (ATA) controllers with two connectors, usually we called them as primary and secondary connectors (or channels). This means you could put up to 4 devices, 2 devices per connector. If you only have two IDE device (for example, one hard drive and one CD / DVD-ROM), it's best to separate them. Place the hard drive(s) on one cable (on the primary connector) and the CD / DVD-ROM on another (the secondary connector). This configuration offers the best performance and since most users only have one of each device, this is a no-brainer.

If you have two ATA hard drives (or a ATA DVD-ROM and a CD-RW), you have to configure the two in a master / slave configuration. What did you say? Before you go jumping to conclusions, the term master and slave here only means that one device's priority is higher than the other one. For example, if you have a DVD-ROM and a CD-RW, you should set the DVD-ROM as the master device and set the CD-RW as the slave. The logic here is that you will likely use the DVD-ROM more often than the CD-RW and the DVD-ROM is usually faster than your CD-RW. The same thing applies to having two hard drives: set the hard drive that contains your operating system (your boot up drive) as the master and the other drive as slave. You could find the jumpers that will configure your hard drive and CD / DVD-ROM as master or slave on the back, near the IDE connector of your device.

Connecting your ATA hard drives and CD / DVD-ROMs to the motherboard is easy. If you look closely at the IDE cables, you'll notice that one side is marked with a red line. This means that side of the cable should fit the connector near the power connector. Also, there's usually a notch on the cable connector that will only fit one way on the motherboard's and device's connector. Pay attention to these markings and you'll install them in no time. Remember to push the cable into the connector evenly, so you won't bend the pins inside the device's connectors.

Newer hard drives comes with a different connector called Serial ATA (S-ATA). Unlike regular ATA devices, only one device can be connected per one S-ATA connector. Some motherboards offer two connectors, while newer ones may offer up to four or more. Like before, it's best to put your hard drive(s) in order: put the first hard drive in the first S-ATA connector, the next one on the second and so forth. S-ATA cable connectors are different from regular IDE cables. They're smaller and just like its IDE counterpart, will only fit one way. Depending on your motherboard, you may have to prepare a driver disk if you want to install the operating system on your S-ATA hard drive. No driver is necessary if you're planning to install the operating system on your ATA hard drive.

Some motherboards (or more precisely, some storage controllers) may offer a feature called RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk). This feature requires at least two hard drive, so you won't be able to use it if you only have one hard drive connected to the controller. We won't go to details here, but basically you will need to configure your drives as array first and then prepare the driver disk if you want to use a RAID array to store your operating system.

Remember to connect the power cables to your hard drive and CD / DVD-ROMs. Again, these power cables and connector will only fit one way so check what they are before you connect them. Some S-ATA hard drive may require a special S-ATA power connector, usually you could find them on the power supply or you could use a converter that's bundled with your motherboard. If both are available, only use one of them and not both.

Next, connect your floppy drive. It's basically just like installing the cables for your hard drive and CD / DVD-ROM. The only difference will be size of the cables and the connectors, but their markings and orientation are the same.

After connecting the data and power cables, it's time to power up your PC again. Your motherboard usually automatically detects any storage devices you've connected. For ATA devices, you could check it through the BIOS 'Standard CMOS Features' menu. For S-ATA devices, it will show either here or on your controller's own BIOS menu. This will usually be shown after your BIOS boot up screen. Speaking of BIOS, there are several things you need to do.


What we have to do now is configure the boot up sequence. Since we're going to install an operating system into an empty hard drive, we will have to use another device (like your CD / DVD-ROM) to boot (and install the operating system). For the sake of brevity, we'll assume that you will be using Windows XP for your PC's operating system. Thankfully, your Windows XP installation CD also doubles as a boot up CD. You could use this CD to boot your PC and start the installation process. We only need to configure the first boot drive to be your CD / DVD-ROM drive and the second boot drive to be your hard drive. When your PC boots up, the BIOS will find your Windows XP CD - just follow the instructions and we're on our way to installing Windows. Now, remember - we may have to prepare a driver disk if we're going to use a S-ATA device or a RAID array to store the operating system. Make sure you have connected the floppy drive (both data and power cables) and configured it properly in the BIOS.

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