Capturing BIOS o/p

  • Thread starter Thread starter George Cox
  • Start date Start date
G

George Cox

When I boot my Intel WinXP PC the BIOS (I guess it's the BIOS anyway)
outputs some white text on a black background that says something about
the BIOS, SCSI, PCI devices, etc.

I would like to study that output at my leisure. Is it captured (or can
I capture it) to a file for later reading?

I know that this isn't really an XP matter, but I don't know where to
post questions about the BIOS. Any suggestions?
 
What you're seing is simply a report of what the BIOS has detected in your
system. It is not captured anywhere except on the retina of your eye and to
read it later - why? Just go into the BIOS and look at all the settings.

Your owner's manual SHOULD tell you how to get into the BIOS and what the
different screens are for and how to change the settings.
 
Capturing would be a little difficult, because it involves running (screen
capture)software at a time when the system hasn't even checked and
initialized any of the basic-basics yet.
However, the things that are displayed are simply viewable by hitting Esc,
or F2 or Del (depending what BIOS your system has; but it's indicated at
initial power on so you'll know).
Then you can browse through all the BIOS setup pages and options (NOT
changing anything in the process) and that way seeing what is defined. As a
little 'bonus' you can then use the Ctrl-PrtSc key combination to 'dump' the
screen displayed onto your printer.

hth

george
 
Just hit the pause button. Then, when you have finished reading that page,
hit the ESC button to continue.
 
If you know where the PAUSE/BREAK key is on your keyboard, pressing that at
the right moment will stop the page..
 
Jerry said:
What you're seing is simply a report of what the BIOS has detected in your
system. It is not captured anywhere except on the retina of your eye and to
read it later - why? Just go into the BIOS and look at all the settings.
Click to expand...

If what I see is "in the settings" why does the BIOS have to detect it?
 
The BIOS has detected it.. but it still has to initialize the hardware in
the right order..
 
george said:
Capturing would be a little difficult, because it involves running (screen
capture)software at a time when the system hasn't even checked and
initialized any of the basic-basics yet.
However, the things that are displayed are simply viewable by hitting Esc,
or F2 or Del (depending what BIOS your system has; but it's indicated at
initial power on so you'll know).
Click to expand...

No, that will show me the BIOS setting, but not what the BIOS discovers
"outside itself", if I may put it that way, as it boots.
 
George said:
Please excuse my ignorance, but how does one run these?
Click to expand...

Each page will have a grey area containg Script Code. Highlight the area in
grey, copy, then paste into a plain text editor such as Notepad. Then Save
As... to a relevant name with the suffix .VBS.

VBS files should be associated with the Windows scripting engine. However,
it is possible they are set to Open with the command line version.
Highlight one of the .VBS files then right-click. Select the Open With
option, then change that so those types of files always Open using
C:\WINDOWS\system32\wscript.exe

If the "Open with..." option isn't in the right-click menu, you can perform
the same association by right-clicking on one of the files, selecting
Properties from that menu, then use the Opens With: change dialogue there.

BTW, if you haven't already you should download/install the latest MS
scripting support files located here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...43-7e4b-4622-86eb-95a22b832caa&DisplayLang=en

Note that the above update is newer than even XPSP2 so worth your time to
grab. :)
 
except, the scripts as-is won't give you a nice listing as you'd like, but
instead will display all eht individual pieces of information, one-by-one in
a dialog box, that you OK to get the next piece.
So without altering the scripts (which I fear is over the OP's head) this
won't help him.
:-((
george
 
george said:
except, the scripts as-is won't give you a nice listing as you'd like, ...
Click to expand...

Never said it would.
So without altering the scripts (which I fear is over the OP's head) this
won't help him.
Click to expand...

I don't know that editing a script is over the OP's head, and neither do
you. As to how much help it will be, who knows. I offered it as just
another suggestion for getting some of the information requested.
 
Sky King said:
Never said it would.
Click to expand...

I know you didn't, but the course of the thread it wouldn't be at all
strange to think that was implied. (But hey, I'm no native english speaking
person, so you guys might very well have some subtle nuance in there, that I
have missed)
I don't know that editing a script is over the OP's head, and neither do
you.
Click to expand...


You're right, I don't if editing *a* script is over his head.
I'm pretty sure editing *these* scripts is over his head (as small as they
are). Why?
Because after your pointer to them some posts back, he's asking "how does
one run these?"
If he knew how to modify these (obviously having seen them), I'm pretty
confident he would have know how to run them.

:-))
 
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