Award BIOS / CMOS Setup

This is the BIOS setup for Award BIOS v6.00PG. If you have a different version of the Award BIOS their would be a lot of similarities. If your BIOS is AMI or Phoenix then the common BIOS features would have some similarities. Whatever BIOS you have, this setup guide should give you an idea about how to setup a BIOS. Please note that setting up BIOS incorrectly could cause system malfunction, therefore it is recommended that you also follow the BIOS guide provided on your motherboard manual. If you decide to make changes to certain options it is safer to make a note of what you have changed. Then restart the system to see how it performs. If the system behaves abnormally or becomes unstable you can revert back to your previous settings.

Click on any of the BIOS setup options below to setup that feature.

Softmenu III Setup	PC Health Status
Standard CMOS Features	Load Fail-Safe Defaults
Advanced BIOS Features	Load Optimized Defaults
Advanced Chipset Features	Set Password
Integrated Peripherals	Save & Exit Setup
Power Management Setup	Exit Without Saving
PnP/PCI Configurations

Softmenu III

Softmenu III is where you can setup up the CPU without setting jumpers on the motherboard. You can setup the CPU simply by selecting the speed i.e. Pentium III 750 from the list. This ensures that the CPU bus, multiplier, voltage etc, is correctly set for that particular CPU. However you can manually setup each feature if required. Once you have finished with the setup press ESC to return the previous menu. See figure 1.

Standard CMOS Features

Here you can setup the basic BIOS features such as date, time, type of floppy etc. Use the arrow keys to move around and press enter to select the required option. You can specify what IDE devices you have such as Hard drive, CD-ROM, ZIP drive etc. The easiest way to setup the IDE devices is by leaving it set to auto. This allows the BIOS to detect the devices automatically so you don't have to do it manually. At the bottom, it also displays the total memory in your system. See figure 2.

Advanced BIOS Features

As you can see from figure 3, there are numerous advance settings which you can select if required. For most cases leaving the default setting should be adequate. 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 third boot device to CD/DVD-ROM. See Figure 3.

Advanced Chipset Features

Here you can setup the contents of the chipset buffers. It is closely related to the hardware and is therefore recommended that you leave the default setting unless you know what you are doing. Having an incorrect setting can make your system unstable. If you know that your SDRAM can handle CAS 2, then making changes can speed up the memory timing. If you have 128MB SDRAM then the maximum amount of memory the AGP card can use is 128MB. See Figure 4

Inegrated Peripherals

This menu allows you to change the various I/O devices such as IDE controllers, serial ports, parallel port, keyboard etc. You can make changes as necessary. See figure 5.

Power Management Setup

The power management allows you to setup various power saving features, when the PC is in standby or suspend mode. See figure 6.

PnP/PCI Configurations

This menu allows you to configure your PCI slots. You can assign IRQ's for various PCI slots. It is recommended that you leave the default settings as it can get a bit complicated messing around with IRQ's. See figure 7.

PC Health Status

This menu displays the current CPU temperature, the fan speeds, voltages etc. You can set the warning temperature which will trigger an alarm if the CPU exceeds the specified temperature. See figure 8.

Load Fail-Safe Defaults

If you made changes to the BIOS and your system becomes unstable as a result, you can change it back to default. However if you made many changes and don't know which one is causing the problem, your best bet is to choose the option "Load Fail Safe Mode Defaults" from the BIOS menu. This uses a minimal performance setting, but the system would run in a stable way. From the dialog box Choose "Y" followed by enter to load Fail-Safe Defaults.

Load Optimized Defaults

Like the Fail-Safe mode above, this option loads the BIOS default settings, but runs the system at optimal performance. From the dialog box Choose "Y" followed by enter to load Optimized Defaults.

Set Password

To password protect your BIOS you can specify a password. Make sure you don't forget the password or you can not access the BIOS. The only way you can access the BIOS is by resetting it using the reset jumper on the motherboard.