Cmos

Can anyone please tell me how to get to read my CMOS settings on my PC, I am going to change my internal pc battery and I would like the settings before I disconnect the battery.

Reboot and keep hitting the delete key when the screen is still in the B&W (like DOS) mode. This will get you into your BIOS settings.

Cheers

To get into the BIOS (cmos) settings, you need to press a particular key while the machine is starting up. Generally it is the Del (delete) key but with some motherboards it may be the F1 key. As the machine is starting, there will be brief instructions on the screen telling you which key to press. Sometimes you may not see these instructions because the computer passes that point before the monitor has warmed up. It helps to run the machine for a few minutes, then shut down and restart, so that the monitor is already warmed up.

The trick is to press the required key after the point where the computer can recognise its keyboard but before your operating system (windows?) starts to load.

Once into the BIOS, your problem will be to decide which settings to record. It would take forever to write down everything. When you are familiar with the process, this is easy because you can recognise the settings that have been changed from their default values.

Personally I write down the settings for the hard drive (even though the BIOS should automatically detect these settings).

I also take note of any of on-board peripherals that have been disabled to avoid conflict with add-on cards. For example, in my case the on-board sound is disabled because I am using a Sound Blaster card. Similarly my on-board LAN and games ports are disabled because more capable add-on cards are fitted.

regards
Coldamus

Just as a hint. Unless you have changed you BIOS settings then nothing should be different from the default and should not affect your system. I take it by the fact that you don't know how to access CMOS is a hint that you have ot visited it before. If it is a more modern computer and as mentioned by Coldamus your computer should auto-detect them.

Hope it helps.

Cheers

Kris

Thanks all, I didnt realise that BIOS was the same as CMOS. If you dont hear from me for three weeks you know I did something wrong, and the pc has gone to the shop. :eek: