Windows 10 like older versions uses either BIOS or UEFI as the main system support base. But how to tell if your PC Windows 10 uses either UEFI or BIOS? This is important because knowing what is running on your device makes it easy to update the software when needed to fix various issues.
BIOS (Basic Input Output System) is a small piece of software stored on a non-volatile chip slotted on the motherboard that sends commands to the system so that it can boot up and configure system hardware, such as hard drive, keyboard, mouse, processor, memory, and others peripheral devices attached to your computer.
BIOS has been around for as long as the Windows operating system itself. It acts as a conduit between system software and hardware so that they can keep operating at optimum level. But its getting old now that makes it less preferable option for manufacturers on modern computers. BIOS is marred by some limitations, such as slow startup times, lack of boot security, and limited drive partition support.
On the other hand, UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is a new system that has replaces BIOS on many desktop PCs and laptops that are in the market. UEFI delivers faster startup times, has its own dedicated boot manager, supports large drive partitions, gives total security to protect your system against malware and other bootkit attacks during startup in order to avoid device getting frozen or stuck on startup, and support range of different networks.
Like mentioned above, most modern day computers have UEFI built into them, but many older devices still rely on BIOS. If you want to know the type of system running on your Windows PC, you can get all the information about in two different ways.
In the tutorial below, you will learn how to tell whether your computer is using UEFI or BIOS.
How to Find Out if your PC uses UEFI or BIOS from System Information
This is the easier of the two methods to check if your device supports BIOS or UEFI.
1 – Click Start.
2 – Type System Information and click on the search result. Alternatively, press Windows Key + R to open RUN dialog box, type msinfo32 in the box and hit OK to open System Information window.
3 – Now under System Summery, find BIOS Mode on the list. If its showing Legacy or BIOS your device is using BIOS. And if ti says UEFI, then it uses newer UEFI system support.
How to check if PC uses BIOS or UEFI from setupact.log
This is a bit technical method and requires you to check the setupact.log file to check the BIOS or UEFI status on your device.
1 – Press Windows Key + R on keyboard to open RUN box.
2 – Type %SystemRoot%\Panther in the command box and hit OK button.
3 – Now open the setupact.log file using the Notepad.
4 – Press the Ctrl + F keyboard open Find.
5 – In Find, search for Detected Boot Environment.
6 – If the line says Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: BIOS, your device is using BIOS. And if the links says Callback_BootEnvironmentDetect: Detected boot environment: UEFI, then its using UEFI.
7 – All done.
If you want to know which version of BIOS or UEFI is running on your computer, check out this guide for it.