How to enter BIOS

Accessing the BIOS is not only helpful when your computer breaks down. The system gives you options that you can’t find in the Windows user interface. Many ad­just­ments to the hardware are usually done from the BIOS. Users can configure computer com­po­nents to speed up the per­for­mance of their computer. For example, the BIOS can be used to overclock the CPU. You can also enter the BIOS to make system launches faster.

The BIOS es­sen­tial­ly starts running as soon as you boot a computer. In fact, the device wouldn’t work without it. This important system ensures that other software on a computer can be loaded. It solves an in­ter­est­ing problem: for the computer to start a software program, another software program has to tell it to launch the software. The BIOS is located on a storage module in­de­pen­dent from the power supply and therefore runs im­me­di­ate­ly after switching the computer on. It provides in­struc­tions to launch the entire system.

Ideally, you should never have to access the BIOS. That’s why entering the program is not very intuitive. BIOS is only intended to start the actual operating system and all the necessary com­po­nents. Computer man­u­fac­tur­ers therefore only allow the BIOS to be launched for a few seconds when booting the system. When the computer boots, a screen message will indicate a certain key that has to be pressed to open BIOS. You will usually have just enough time to do so before the start screen of the operating system appears.

Which key you need to press in order to access the BIOS is de­ter­mined by the device man­u­fac­tur­er. But certain keys are more fre­quent­ly used for this purpose than others. They include: [Del], [Esc], [F1], [F2], [F10] or [F12], among others. Sometimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly with older systems, the key com­bi­na­tion [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Esc] is used. The table below includes a list of typical BIOS keys according to different man­u­fac­tur­ers.