-: In this section of the course,
we're going to cover the BIOS,
also known as the basic input output system,
and the UEFI, also known
as the unified extensible firmware interface.
Now, in your computer system
you're either going to have the BIOS or the UEFI, but not both.
The BIOS is the older version of these two
and it only supports 32-bit processors and motherboards.
The BIOS is a program that a CPU is going to use
to start the computer system when it's first powered on.
The operating system, like Windows, Linux, or OSX
are built as software and they're stored on your hard drive
or solid state device,
but your computer doesn't even know how to read
or write to that device,
so it relies on the BIOS to understand
how to read input from the keyboard,
display information to the screen
and read or write to different storage devices,
like your hard disc.
The BIOS also serves as a method of configuring
the motherboard and its features
using a menu-driven text-based interface.
Now, this BIOS is actually stored as firmware
on the motherboard of your system.
Firmware is software on a chip
and it contains a specialized BIOS program code
in flash memory on your motherboard.
This firmware software is specialized
to the exact motherboard that you're using,
and it's created as a very low level code
in order to interact with the various components
on that motherboard.
An operating system like Windows, Linux or OSX
on the other hand is created as a generic software
that runs on any motherboard and therefore it can't serve
the same functions as the BIOS.
Now over time, a newer version of the BIOS was created,
and this is called UEFI, U-E-F-I,
or the user extensible firmware interface.
Now the UEFI can support 64-bit processors, unlike the BIOS,
as well as providing you with a graphical user interface,
the ability to use a mouse, as well as your keyboard,
network functionality and better security.
The UEFI is still stored as part of the firmware,
just like the BIOS was sitting there on the motherboard.
Now, as we go through this section
we're going to cover the remaining parts of objective 3.4
which states, given a scenario you must be able to install
and configure motherboards, central processing units or CPUs
and add on cards, specifically the portion
for the BIOS and the UEFI under objective 3.4.
Now, as we begin this section,
we're going to first take a look at how a computer boots up
when it's first powered on,
as well as its different boot options
that you can configure inside the BIOS and the UEFI.
Next, we'll discuss the different types
of BIOS and UEFI security
that you're going to be able to configure
on a given computer system.
Then we'll move into a discussion
of the trusted platform module known as the TPM
and the hardware security module, known as the HSM,
as well as their roles in securing your system and its data.
After that, we'll move into the different
configuration options inside of the BIOS and UEFI
that involve your system's cooling features,
such as the fans that are used in active cooling.
Finally, we'll move into two short demonstrations
where you're going to learn how to configure the BIOS
on a 32-bit system
and how to configure the UEFI on a 64-bit system.
So let's get started with our coverage
of the BIOS and the UEFI in this section of the course.