Updated on June 21, 2000 by Thomas
McGuire - Page 2/12
You can boot up faster & improve your performance by changing
settings in your BIOS. First of all need to access it. When
you're starting the PC, hit the Delete
key. It should bring up the BIOS a few seconds later. Use
another key if necessary.
NOTE - Write down all
your current settings for future reference in case you do
something that you shouldn't have. Either that or want you
just want to restore it to your old configuration. Some
of the definitions used are taken from my VT6X4 manual.
You may need to search
under different sections of your BIOS to find these, so be
prepared to look. I'll put these into different
sub-categories where they generally would appear.
Date: Use this to set the date for the computer to use.
Time: Use this to set the time for the computer to use.
master: There are more options available for selection in a submenu. Many
of the parameters for the options below will be shown on
your hard drive, so write them down if possible (Note these
fields are only necessary for hard drives, not for DVD
drives, etc.). Many of the settings used here will be
printed on your hard drive.
IDE HDD auto-detection:
This can be used to auto-detect
all parameters for the values shown below. Press Enter to try auto-detection.
Access mode: Use this
to set the access mode for the hard drive. Set this to Auto if you are unsure. Set to Normal
if the hard drive is less then or equal to 528MB (highly
unlikely now). Set to LBA
(Logical Block Addressing)
for large disk support. If LBA mode is not supported try Large
Capacity: Enter in the
size (in MB) of the hard drive.
Cyclinder: Use this
field to set the number of cyclinders on the hard drive.
Head: Use this to set
the number of read/write heads on the hard drive.
slave: See IDE Primary master.
Secondary master: See IDE Primary master.
Secondary slave: See IDE Primary master.
Drive A: Select the type of floppy drive you have installed in your
machine, if any.
Drive B: Select the type of the second floppy drive you have installed in
your machine, if any.
mode support: If you are using a Japanese PC then you'll most likely be using this type of floppy
drive, in which case you should set it to Drive
on which drive it is installed as. All others should set
this to Disabled.
Video: Sets the VGA mode for your graphics card. Leave
this set to EGA/VGA.
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