There's no one standard for system BIOS design, though there are many constants. The BIOS setup firmware usually present a number of screens or sections, each with many different potential names but similar functions.

The first menu contains basic system configuration items such as the system date and time, the floppy drive(s), the primary and secondary IDE devices, and the amount of system memory. Since this hardware is usually auto-detected, it's a good idea to check this screen after upgrading, just to make sure that extra RAM is listed or that new hard disk or CD burner is recognized. Not seeing upgraded hardware in this screen is a dead giveaway that something went wrong with your installation.

The Advanced BIOS or Advanced Chipset area features a wider array of options, with the most important relating to boot preferences, mouse/keyboard settings, BIOS caching, and some system security settings. You might use the choices found here to rearrange the order of storage devices tried at startup (if you need to bypass the hard disk and boot a Windows installation or emergency-utility CD); enable or disable PS/2 or USB peripherals; or set a system password.

Next comes Power Management, a part of the BIOS that usually doesn't need to be adjusted on a functioning PC -- the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) spec gives control of the power-management and Plug and Play devices to the operating system, so the Control Panel or system-tray-icon power-management settings in current versions of Windows take precedence. You might also see the infamous "Restore on Power Loss" menu choice, which if set to "restore" (rather than "off"), can cause a system to reboot upon exiting Windows.

Another menu that should be ignored if your PC's running smoothly is PCI Configuration. There's usually an entry here for Plug and Play OS, which if set to "yes" will give PCI resource configuration to the operating system. Unless you've recently installed a PCI video card, or are having problems with a new PCI card, leave well enough alone. You can force IRQs to specific PCI slots, but this should only be done as a last resort when Windows refuses to properly allocate resources and conflicts arise.

The Integrated Peripherals menu is an important one, because it lets you enable or disable various built-in features of the motherboard. With the high number of integrated features in today's motherboards (even performance models as well as the economy variety), it's quite common to see users boot their systems and have to wait for a unused RAID controller to auto-detect devices, or Windows to load and repeatedly ask for a mystery driver.

The motto here is "If you don't use 'em, lose 'em" -- disable any RAID, motherboard- rather than expansion-card-mounted audio or video, FireWire port, or other feature that you don't need, eliminating the need for a driver and freeing system resources. Just make sure you know which ports and peripherals are active and essential, as opposed to just taking up space.

PC Health Status is a real gearhead section of the BIOS, where under-the-hood temperatures, cooling fan speeds, and voltage levels are displayed. For most users, these are useless numbers, but for the hardcore enthusiast -- specifically, the CPU overclocker -- knowing exactly at which core voltage a Pentium 4 is running can be vital information. The same goes for temperature levels, as running a PC out of spec can create chip-frying heat and monitoring temperatures can help determine overall system tolerances.