How to access the BIOS on a HP PC

I recently had to work on a Windows 7 PC that required XP Mode enabled. In order to do this I had to access the BIOS and enable virtualisation. Theoretically this was easy to do but when I

rebooted to access the BIOS, the HP start up screen didn’t have any option to enter ‘Setup’ or ‘BIOS’ like you would expect to see. The only option I had was ‘Press Escape for start up menu’, which I did with little success.

The PC in question was a HP Pro 3405 tower but this shouldn’t be any reason for it not to have the option. The usual method would be to use F1 but it turns out that the answer is :

TO PRESS F10 WHEN THE PC IS BOOTING UP

I don’t know why HP don’t display this as an option but thankfully it still works anyway.

How to unregister and register a DLL or OCX file in Windows

If you work as an IT professional or system developer you would have encountered DLL (Dynamic Link Library) and OCX OLE Control Files files. Typically you have discovered them as a result of problems.

Although, these files are extremely useful providing functionality within the operating system (OS) and providing custom functions for applications, the OS can get confused at times and you will need to remove them from the mix (not deleting them) and re-apply them.

Thankfully, this is a very easy process :

1. Open up a command prompt. You can do this by going to Start menu > Run or using the keyboard shortcut of Winkey + R.

2. Type “cmd” (without the quotation marks) .

 

3. Press enter and a Windows Command Prompt will be displayed.

4. Navigate to the exact location of the DLL or OCX. A DLL has been used for this example.

5. Type “regsvr32 /u filename.dll” where “filename” is the name of the DLL that you are trying to unregister.

6. Press enter.

7. There will be a brief pause after pressing enter and then you will receive the message : “DllUnregisterServer in (File name) succeeded”

To register a DLL or OCX file

1. Repeat steps 1-4

2. Type regsvr32 filename.dll” where “filename” is the name of the DLL that you are trying to unregister.

3. Press enter

4. After a brief pause you will receive a success message.