Abstract: When booting a personal computer, it needs to find instructions immediately to tell it what to run to start up the personal computer. These it finds within the so-called basic input/output system (BIOS) program. Usually the BIOS program is stored in a separate location, for example a ROM. It is usually shadowed into system memory (SM) to speed up its operation. The copying of the BIOS program to system memory (SM), amongst others, causes the boot process to be a relatively slow process. In the present invention, the system memory (SM) comprises a persistent system memory (PSM) and the BIOS program is stored in the persistent system memory (PSM). Furthermore, selected information used by the BIOS program is stored in persistent system memory (PSM) as well. As a result, the speed of booting the personal computer is significantly increased.