What is CMOS? Complimentary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) is a chip installed on the motherboard, which stores the hardware configuration of a computer.
The following information is stored in CMOS: Date and time.
CPU type and memory size.
Floppy disk drive parameters.
Hard disk parameters such as cylinders, heads, and sectors. When a computer is booted, it checks whether or not the hardware is configured according to the CMOS configuration. If the hardware configuration and the CMOS configuration differ, the basic input/output system (BIOS) issues a warning.
The CMOS SETUP, a menu-driven application, is used to reconfigure CMOS settings. The CMOS SETUP program can be executed by pressing the DEL key or CTRL+ALT+ESC at the time of system startup during Power On Self Test (POST).
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