Re: Somrthing altered my BIOS settings

Bios settings are held in the cmos, a form of RAM. The cmos battery
maintains life of the RAM while the PC is physically off. Its on the
motherboard.

The bios is held in a chip on the motherboard. The cmos is NOT located
there.

2 different animals.

Like the PC's RAM, cmos can marginally fail. The cmos battery can be on the
virge of failing as well. The voltage regulator on the motherboard feeding
the cmos can be iffy as well.

Yes, 3rd party software could alter some cmos settings. Unlikely. More
unlikely as you had it installed before...

Strictly flashing the bios chip does not alter the cmos.
--
Dave

"Sleepless in New Jersey" <SleeplessinNewJersey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote in message news:1B1DF921-59F6-4215-BF8F-2E21EDBF18A9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Can applications alter BIOS settings?

After reinstalling Windows XP Home I ran into a phenomenon that I have
never
encountered before. I reinstalled a frequently-used application. After
a
subsequent reboot I found myself looking at a gray screen with a blinking
cursor in the upper left of the screen. Windows failed to boot. I
restarted, got into the BIOS setup, restored the default settings and
rebooted. This time everything was normal. I deleted the application. A
few days later I reinstalled a game and ran into the same phenomenon.
Restoring the BIOS defaults again cured the problem.

Neither program has ever given me a problem in the past.

I would seem that the applications somehow managed to alter the BIOS
settings. If so, this is something I had considered impossible. This is
read-only memory. I know that the BIOS can be flashed by special
software.
I did not attempt any such action.

I am mystified, hence my question.

If my working hypothesis is incorrect, what else could be going on?









.

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