Introduction: Hacks #1-10

With the exception of your PC's unhackable power supply, hacking your PC starts with the lowest level of detail within your system board—from how fast the clock is that makes the CPU tick to how the I/O bus is configured for your hard drives and peripherals. Hacking starts with the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) setup program, which affects the CPU, memory, chipset, and peripherals.

While some PC users think in terms of exotic mice, expansive flat-panel LCD screens, and high download bandwidth speeds, there are myriad mysteriously-named parameters and features within the system BIOS. These parameters may control everything from CPU and memory clocking to I/O device configurations and system passwords. The right amount of parameter tweaking at the BIOS level can squeeze another few million-instructions-per-second (MIPS) or microseconds of faster video or hard drive performance out of the bones of your system.

Of course, like anything functional, the right bones or foundation elements have to be in place—in this case reliable and capable system components (CPU, chipset, and memory) and a BIOS, the essential innards of any PC, that can be tweaked. Tweaking or hacking a system board is done with software settings in the BIOS setup program, hardware jumpers, or dual-in-line-package (DIP) switches, so you must have the manual for your system board handy to be able to locate the correct jumpers and switches. I recommend you also have a small flashlight handy so you can see, as well as a pair of needle-nosed pliers to move jumpers around, and the right screwdriver to be able to get into your PC's case. Other than these tools, all you need is a steady hand and attention paid to the keystrokes needed to navigate your PC's setup program.

Before you hack the system board, CPU, BIOS, peripherals, or operating system, there are a few basic things I need to cover to get you out of any trouble you can get yourself into with the hacks in this and subsequent chapters. Hacking your system BIOS has potential dangers: one slipup and things can quit working. Fortunately there are some easy ways out of most mistakes made at this level of system hacking.

Your PC's system board typically comes to you "factory fresh" without any tweaks or parameters set to abnormal values. Once you start reconfiguring the system, almost anything can happen—from not being able to boot up at all, to partial boot and system crash, to partial boot and all else is pending a password you forgot or never knew. These hacks will get you around a couple of common mistakes and problems that will inevitably come up as you work with numerous PCs.