Basic Boot screen?

[tony draper]

When you first hit the on switch a screen appears with basic info ie what species of CPU your engine has amount of memory ect,trouble is this screen passes so fast it is almost impossible to read,I recall in the good old days of DOS one could add a line to the auto exec.bat or command.com, I forget which now that paused this page in order to make same readable,is there something one can do with do with modern machines to make this page accessible to the human eye ? ie stop it at that point
The reason I ask is I had to switch a mates puter on and off about six times just to read exactly what manner of CPU he had within.
:uhoh:

[jimtherev]

Every machine is different...:eek: but every one I've had has had a line at the bottom of the first POST screen which invites you to do something. Fr e.g. my present m/c has the following:

TAB for POST details, ESC for Boot Screen, DEL for Setup.

I seem to remember being invited to press F12 on another machine, too - function and computer type escape me now.

So, try some or all of the above, and see what comes up... alternatively there might be a FM somewhere for you to RT (You know, the one that you put somewhere safe in case you need it sometime)

[RiscOS]

Tony D,

Found this little gem ( or an earlier version) a couple of years ago.

PC Wizard 2009 - Download (http://pc-wizard-2009.en.softonic.com/)

PC Wizard, finds and reports every detail you ever wanted to know (and some you didn't) about every device in, or hung off, your computer, what's driving it, how well and fast it's working etc. Worth it's weight in brussel sprouts, it is.

Is now a permanent resident on my computers, and on CD to load into any computer I intend to poke around in.

RiscOS

[Bushfiva]

Right click on My Computer, then Properties will also give you CPU information. Something like Belarc will also give you lots of CPU info, including its stepping.

Booting to BIOS on some of my machines is F2.

On many machines, you can get the computer to pause at the boot screen by disconnecting the keyboard before turning it one.

[green granite]

On many machines, you can get the computer to pause at the boot screen by disconnecting the keyboard before turning it one.

With the error message "Keyboard not found, press F10 to continue" :E

[gizmocat]

The way to pause the POST screen is to press the Pause/Break key.

[Ancient Observer]

Prof. Drapes,
I echo RiscOS's plug for PC Wizard. Our local long haired and bearded pc helper introduced me to it.
Not only will it do what you want, it tells you so much stuff........including stuff that you'll be surprised to find................It will show you how much confidential stuff you have on yer pc.

[tony draper]

Hmmm, strange,just changed my CPU,the one I took out had a great deal of information on it at the above mentioned boot screen,the new one doesn't or just basic stuff that I could read in sys info or bios.
will look at that download ,thanks chaps.:)