BIOS

Short for Basic Input-Output System, your computer's BIOS is the primitive "brain stem" of your computer. It is similar to the part of your brain that controls your heartbeat and breathing, leaving the rest free to ponder those big philosophical dilemmas.

Your BIOS is responsible for two main things:

• Base-level management of critical hardware (e.g. your CPU and hard drives)
• Starting the process of loading your operating system

When you turn on your computer, the first thing that happens is that your BIOS activates and attempts to POST (Power On System Test), to make sure that all your critical hardware is working properly. Then, it searches for an available operating system to load into memory. After that, your OS takes over (although your BIOS is still running in the background).

Sometimes, you need to change a setting in your BIOS in order to accomplish some task. The most common of these involves changing your computer's boot order so that it first looks for an operating system in your CD drive before looking on your hard drives. This is necessary if you want to use a recovery CD.