Setting up BIOS
Most BIOS are similar if your BIOS is AMI or Phoenix then the common BIOS features should have the same similarities.
How to Access the BIOS
The method for accessing the BIOS is going to be dependent upon the manufacturer of the motherboard and the BIOS vender they have selected. The actual process to get to the BIOS is identical, just the key that is needed to be pressed will vary. It is important to have the user manual for the motherboard handy whenever changes will be made to the BIOS. The first step is to look up what key needs to be pressed to enter the BIOS. Some of the common keys used to access the BIOS are F1, F2 and the Del key. Generally the motherboard will post this information when the computer first turns on, but it is best to look it up before hand. Next, power on the computer system and press the key to enter the BIOS after the beep for a clean POST is signaled. I will often press the key a couple times to make sure it registered. If the procedure has been done correctly, the BIOS screen should be displayed rather than the typical boot screen.
Once you get BIOS screen
As you can see from figure above, there are numerous settings which you can select. What we want to do is change your booting device priority. As you can see the first boot device is set to floppy. This ensures that the floppy disk is read first when the system boots, and therefore can boot from windows boot disk. The second boot device is the Hard disk and third is set to LS120. If you want to boot from a bootable CD then you can set the first boot device to CD/DVD-ROM. After you install your OS (Operating System) you can change the first boot device to hard drive so the PC doesn't search for a bootable disc every time your system boots.
Floppy Drive Error
Most people will get the "error floppy drive press F1 to continue" on start up, this is because most people do not use floppy drives anymore, there is an extremely easy fix to this however. In the Standard CMOS Features there is an option called Halt On, change it to All But Diskette/Floppy and that should fix all your problems so you should not have to push F1 every time your pc starts. |
