Wanted: Utility to document & record all BIOS settings

I'd like to be able to document all my BIOS settings in a PC file that I can browse and study. I've just taken a number of photos of the various screens but there must surely be a way of some utility reading the settings and writing them to a file - Word, Excel, whatever.

Any such safe utility around?

Apparently you can use the command "wmic" from a command prompt window... According to google you could try "wmic bios get /format:list", however I don't know what information from the bios it gives you...

Practically nothing of use. BIOS version. Serial number etc. It doesn't output the settings afaik.

The best solution might be to find some online forum where someone has posted theirs, and use it as a template.

Ahh ok (I'm on a Mac so couldn't test it) - in that case I think (it's been a long time since I used it) SISANDRA could be used to report on the system...

Found one for you http://mindprod.com/products4.html#CMOSSAVE

Thanks, it certainly appears to save the BIOS as a precaution against corruption or ill-advised meddling. It doesn't though appear to actual document the various settings.

You could just print them with the PrtScr key...

I'm pretty sure that the PrtScr key wont do anything in BIOS (unless you have a fairly basic printer connected to a parallel port). Why not just take photographs of the screens?

You might be able to get some through WMI

I think the trouble is BIOS are all very much different and only the actual mobo manufacturer knows properly what is going on with it, some stuff simply is not exposed to the OS, and is not standardized anyway so could not be understood by generic programs. Which is why you don't get generic overclocking utilities but instead get the mobo-manafacturer specific ones. Business/workstation level equipment will no doubt provide much better information for managed environments, but they probably cut it out of consumer systems because it's unneccessary.

Hopefully in 2 years time or so most reasonable equipment will be UEFI

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 27-Oct-11 22:12:18)

Spot on. I did that yesterday and am currently creating a Word document with the various screens and settings on.

Actually I'm finding it fascinating to see the various elements that the BIOS has settings for. I've written mainframe IPLs in the past but not the equivalent of a BIOS.