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I have clean installed two laptops now, with Windows 10: An Asus laptop and a Lenovo laptop. However, for both installs — I noticed that the PC’s still display the Asus loading image when booting and the Lenovo loading image when booting respectively.

I initially thought the clean install wipes the whole laptop, but on second thought, I do not think it wipes the UEFI/BIOS. So my question is:

Is the data for the loading page that displays when you turn on your laptop, installed onto the UEFI/BIOS?

Giacomo1968
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ThePhysicsOverthinker
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1 Answers1

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in modern computers BIOS/Firmware (UEFI) code are stored in a chip (an EEProm) attached to the motherboard. The Windows install exists on your hard disks. When you install, you wipe out the hard disk, but the BIOS is untouched.

This is a picture of an old BIOS chip

Source: http://www.knowcomputing.com/bios/

If you were to wipe out the EEProm, the motherboard would stop working until you sent it back to the manufacturer to have the software "flashed" back onto the chip. Your motherboard is simply an expensive paper-weight without its BIOS code. It can't POST or boot.

The BIOS contains code specifically for that motherboard, so you cannot install a different BIOS, except for manufacturer upgrades. As John noted, the POST logo image is part of the BIOS code.

I've added custom images to fireware before. generally they must be bitmaps of a fixed resolution and aspect ratio, so that the data footprint of the image on the chip is predictable. you have to change the image during a flashing operation in order to update the logo image.

Frank Thomas
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  • Thanks! Please could you clarify what fireware means? And I didn't really follow you when you said "so that the data foorprint of the image is predictable" sorry! – ThePhysicsOverthinker Feb 07 '21 at 00:52
  • Firmware is code that is implemented on a device, and is not writable under most circumstances. software exists on the hard disk so it can be changed as required, but firmware is much more difficult to alter. it is generally attached to the device in a ROM of some kind. As for footprint, just think of it like a box you can store the image in. the image can't be too big or too small; it has to fit just right. a bitmap image uses 1byte per pixel for storage (the value 1-255 indicates the color the pixel is), so a 800x600 pixel bitmap is always stored as the same size in Bytes. – Frank Thomas Feb 07 '21 at 00:57