Award PC BIOS Frequently Asked Questions Award Software has merged with Phoenix Technologies, therefore their resource pages have been combined. Because Phoenix out-sources software, they usually will refuse to provide you with specific answers to your questions. There are several general issues which are addressed below, where you will …
Read More »Hard Disk Sector Structures
A sector is the basic unit of data storage on a hard disk. The term “sector” emanates from a mathematical term referring to that pie shaped angular section of a circle, bounded on two sides by radii and the third by the perimeter of the circle – See Figure 1. …
Read More »The PC-100 Standard
The PC100 Standard The memory chips used on memory modules are not the only determining factor when calculating the speed of memory. The speed of the memory chips is only one of several factors in the overall equation. Other factors include the quality and accuracy of the individual chips, the …
Read More »The Intel® Active Monitor Alerting Utility
Intel® Active Monitor The Intel® Active Monitor is a new alerting utility created by Intel and available exclusively on Intel Desktop Boards 1. As PCs increase in performance and decrease in size, monitoring the cooling and overall system health becomes more important. The Intel Active Monitor works with specialized sensors …
Read More »Detailed Explanation of FAT Boot Sector
Summary Understanding the content and function of a file system “boot sector” can often be helpful in troubleshooting boot failures or disk corruption. A boot sector, usually due to hardware failure or virus infection, may become corrupted. If the partition where this sector resides is the active primary partition, or …
Read More »Hard Drive Glossary
Hard Drive Glossary A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Notice: The information provided herein is presented as is and without any warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. In …
Read More »Attrib MS-DOS Command
Type: External (3.0 and later) Syntax: ATTRIB [d:][path]filename [/S] ATTRIB [+ R|-R] [+A|-A] [+ H|-H] [+ S|-S] [d:][path]filename [/S] Purpose: Sets or displays the read-only, archive, system, and hidden attributes of a file or directory. Discussion Using the ATTRIB command, you can change a file`s read/write attribute or set the …
Read More »Network Hardware Problems
Make sure that there are no shorts between the center copper core and the cable ends. Coax cable is made up of four (4) components, (1) a copper center conductor, (2) an insulator around the copper center conductor, (3) thin wire mesh shielding or ground and (4) the outer sheath. …
Read More »Formatting Your Hard Drive for Windows 2000
Formatting Your Hard Drive By now you should have accomplished the following: You have made a decision whether you were going to use a FAT 16, FAT 32, or NTFS file system for your hard drive. Remember, FAT 16 has a 4 gigabyte partition size limitation! Not sure what “FAT” …
Read More »General Description
Some manufacturers have their own way for entering BIOS as shown below: Acer – Ctrl+Alt+Esc AST, Advantage, Award, Tandon – Ctrl + Alt + Esc Compaq – F10 (When the square is in the top right hand corner of screen) Dell – F1 or Del. Dells – Some require pressing …
Read More »