How To Access Bios

So in this tip, I'm going to show you how to access your bios. Now, first of all, what actually is your bios on your computer? Well, bios stands for "basic input output system," and what it is, it's a low level way of configuring your computer. And what I'm talking about here isn't your font size or anything like that, it's about the system clock, it's about how fast your processor is running and what kind of hard disk drive your computer thinks it has.

Now, normally, this is stuff that you wouldn't need to access everyday, but sometimes, for example, you are reinstalling your operating system, you may need to enter the bios to change the boot order to make sure your computer boots from a CD rather than from the hard disk drive. Other people who may use this are people called "Over Clockers" who want to try and get their computer to run a little bit faster than it normally would, but make sure you heed my warning later on. So, let's take a look at how to do it.

So the time to access your bios is just as the computer is starting up from being powered off. Now, it's different on every computer. On the Dell computer here, you do it by pressing F2.

Now on other computers, there are different ways of getting into the bios. It's best to have a google search to find out what they are. But quite frequently, it's F2.

So, you can see on the screen here, some of the information that the bios gives you, so for example, I can see here the kind of processor that this computer is running, exactly what memory is installed on the computer, and also, what we were talking about earlier on, which is the boot sequence. So, for example, here, it's going to be from the hard disk drive first of all. If we were installing a new operating system, we'd want to make it boot from the CD drive, first of all.

Other things that you can have a look at are which hard disk drives are installed, any other on board devices and so on, but I think you get the idea. It's really low level configuration and stuff that we're looking at here. Now, one word of warning, some bios let you tamper with and fiddle with all kinds of settings and it's really dangerous to do that if you don't know what you're doing.

I always make a note of what settings I'm changing, what they were before I changed them, in case the computer doesn't quite respond properly after I booted it back up again. In a worse case, you can actually fry the inside of your computer, if you start tampering with the processor's settings. But, with all of those warnings in mind, do have a look around.

It's a great way of learning more about how your computer works. And that's how to enter the bios on your computer. Tech expert, David McClelland, shows you how to access the bios on your computer and gives a healthy word of caution on tampering with the bios.