Real Untimate Now on Desktop Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss Real Untimate Now on Desktop in the Windows Vista forums; One thing you need to pay attention to would be a BIOS update for your motherboard...that usually makes a huge difference....

[felix8406]

One thing you need to pay attention to would be a BIOS update for your motherboard...that usually makes a huge difference.

[Znod]

Thanks felix. Good idea. A Vista BIOS update is available for my laptop, but I haven't checked for the desktop. Why would a BIOS update make a "huge" difference? Also, with my dual-boot desktop, could a Vista BIOS update cause problems with XP? I don't think it should since BIOS updates generally are backwards compatible--to a point.

[felix8406]

Originally Posted by Znod

Why would a BIOS update make a "huge" difference?

The BIOS or Basic Input Output System is responsible for initializing the basic chipset hardware on the system and booting the system to the installed OS. It makes sure every chip in you system, hard drives, ports and CPU work together. You have three types of software; the OS, the applications and the BIOS.

Although the BIOS is responsible for many things, its main responsibility is to load the OS. When you start your PC, the BIOS provides the CPU with the first instructions. The CPU cannot get this instructions from the OS until it gets some instructions on how to access the HD, and it’s the BIOS that tells the OS how to access the HD.

Some of the BIOS responsibilities are to do a power-on self-test for all hardware to make sure they are working properly. It activates other BIOS chips on different cards, e.g. PCIe cards, and make sure the OS can work with keyboard, monitors, mouse, printers, etc.

Most of us remember making changes to CMOS, like changing the boot up sequence or enabling booting from a CD. It’s the BIOS that reads these instructions and make them possible.

With this small explanation you can see the importance of the BIOS. Another thing that should come to mind is that as a piece of software, the BIOS can have flaws discovered after it has been released, or it might need to be updated in order to function properly with newer equipment or software, e.g. new operating system, newer drivers and so forth. It’s for this reason that one should update the BIOS when an update is available. Not updating your BIOS can lead to lost of performance, systems crashes and other issues as well.

One more thing, when updating your BIOS make sure to follow the instructions as they as written…not doing this can lead to a dead system.