Hold That Phone or A BIOS Amigo!

Before you order that new PC, hold that phone! With all the new features, PC manufacturers have created a backward compatibility “oops” and it’s a doozy.

If you have had your current PC 4-5 years, chances are you have had to take it apart at least once – for more memory, a new disk, new video card, a new DVD writer. Invariably, you also had to go into the BIOS setup to record the change. You might have hit F1/F2/F6/F10 key at the PC boot to bring up this behind-the-scenes program. You probably also have completely forgotten how you did it. You are now not alone. So have PC makers.

When the computer “boots”, it is trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps; it runs a very short script, which runs a larger script, which finally loads Windows. Think of the steps as making a sandwich.

Lettuce
Tomato	Load Operating System/Windows
Cheese	Check for floppy boot disk
Mustard	Test Keyboard
Ham	Test Memory/RAM
Mayo	Check Power OK
Bread	Power on

If you were to buy a PC at a store, you should note what is no longer available; for example, parallel port (for printer or scanner), PS/2 or even serial ports (for mouse and keyboard). And, of course, no floppy drive. One is now expected to plug everything into a USB port (a smallish, squarish plug about a half-inch wide).

I recently installed a video card in a relatively old machine and expected to hit F1 at boot to record the change. No matter how often or how hard I hit the F1 key, nothing happened. I thought the keyboard was broken.

Now if you look very closely at the line “Test Keyboard” above, it assumes the keyboard is attached at the serial or PS/2 port. No check is made to determine that there is, in fact, no such port, and must be USB and therein lies the problem. The USB detector/adaptor is loaded last --way too late to pick up the F1 hammer.

Now there are work-arounds, but the online documentation has not yet caught up; you will still be directed to the boot setup menu. The current work-around is, once Windows is running, to go to Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager and fiddle about in there. In my case, click on the + key beside Display Adapters, double click on the one I no longer wanted, clicked the General tab, and at the bottom, Device Usage, clicked disable. Phew. Nowhere near as easy as the change table entry in the boot menu.

The curious outcome of all this is that laptops, by their construction, will not have the problem, as the keyboard is built-in and hard-wired to an internal PS/2 port – as is the finger pad. So don’t be surprised if your family argues with you, when they can mimic the boot menu from their laptop, and think you are crazy not being able to do the same from your desktop.

If you are in the market to have a PC bespoke (eg, Dell, Gateway, local shop), you might ask to have an “old-fashioned” parallel/serial board added, as well as PS/2. Maybe even a floppy drive, just to be safe. The last thing you want is to buy a vowel for US_B …

Archie specializes in tutoring and training of seniors in PC security, Windows, Internet, and Microsoft Office. He holds the CompTIA A+ certification and is often featured speaker at Goodwin House in Alexandria; he can be emailed at ama3@tfci-us.com