I have a Pentium II MMX 350Mhz 64Mb RAM running Windows 98SE with all the MS updates. Bios is an Award Bios v4.51pg. I get the following message during boot up: ‘Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A copyright 1998 ‘ The last line in <> is a new message which only has appeared recently. What does it mean and do I need to do anything about it?

This is a pretty hard concept to explain but the general idea is that the SPD chip on your RAM is telling your computer’s BIOS that it is designed for a CAS Latency Time of 3. However, your BIOS has not been configured to run the RAM at a CAS Latency Time of 3 and is alerting you to this fact (CAS stands for Column Access Strobe - see the web reference below for a more detailed explanation). There is a way to fix your problem but unless the current CAS Latency Time is causing operating problems I do not suggest that you do anything. After changing the CAS Latency Value for their RAM, some people have experienced problems such files downloaded off the internet being corrupted. However, if you wish to change the setting, you will need to enter into the BIOS setup. When your computer boots, a message briefly appears saying something along the lines of ‘Press to enter setup’. Look for this message and press the key it requires to enter the BIOS setup. Once in, you will need to locate the CAS Latency Value setting. However, once again I would like to stress that if your computer is working ok, then I wouldn’t go fiddling. CAS Latency is a complex subject and if you are interested in learning more about CAS Latency then have a look at the following site: sysopt.earthweb.com/articles/latency/.