Generic Way to Find a Computer BIOS Date Using Debug (120940)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 4.0
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 4.01
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 5.0a
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.0
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.2
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.21
  • Microsoft MS-DOS operating system 6.22
  • Microsoft Windows 3.0
  • Microsoft Windows 3.1
  • Microsoft Windows 3.11
This article was previously published under Q120940

SUMMARY

When you are troubleshooting problems on a particular computer, you may need to determine the BIOS date of the computer. On most computers, you can view the BIOS date in MS-DOS Debug by "dumping" the contents of the computer's memory into the FFFF:0 range of memory.

MORE INFORMATION

To dump the contents of the computer's memory into the FFFF:0 range, exit Windows and follow the steps below at the MS-DOS command prompt.
  1. Type debug and press ENTER.
  2. At the Debug hyphen prompt, type "d FFFF:0" (without the quotation marks), and then press ENTER. You receive a screen dump similar to the following: 
    FFFF:0000  EA FF E1 00 F0 30 31 2F-32 35 2F 39 33 FF FC 00
.....01/25/93..
.
FFFF:0010  00 00 00 56 44 49 53 4B-33 2E 33 80 00 01 01 00
...VDISK3.3.....
FFFF:0020  01 40 00 00 02 FE 06 00-08 00 01 00 00 00 40 04
.@............@.
FFFF:0030  70 00 2E 8E 06 30 00 BF-E0 06 B9 04 00 AB 47 47
p....0........G
G
FFFF:0040  E2 FB CB 56 50 51 52 57-55 1E 06 53 8B EC 8B 76
...VPQRWU..S...v

FFFF:0050  12 2E 8E 1E 30 00 8B 44-02 A2 21 00 88 26 E7 04
....0..D..!..&..
FFFF:0060  8B 34 C4 1E 12 00 26 8A-47 01 26 8A 67 0D 26 8B
.4....&.G.&.g.&
.
FFFF:0070  4F 12 26 8B 57 14 81 FE-A2 04 75 17 C7 06 2B 05
O.&.W.....u...+.
  3. To exit MS-DOS Debug, press Q and then press ENTER.
The information displayed to the right of the first row (FFFF:0000) may contain a date. If it does, this is very likely the BIOS date of your PC. However there are certain exceptions for some BIOS manufacturers. To verify if this PC may be an exception, query on the BIOS manufacturer's name and "BIOS" and "Date" in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.
Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:7/7/2005
Keywords:KB120940
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