The instructions needed to boot up a computer, such as the BIOS, are typically stored in which type of memory?

• A. RAM
• B. ROM
• C. Cache
• D. Storage

Answer: (B)

The main idea is that the boot-time instructions have to be available even when the computer is powered off. That requires non-volatile memory—memory that retains its data without electricity. ROM (Read-Only Memory) is designed for exactly that: it stores firmware like the BIOS that initializes hardware and starts the boot process before anything else runs. RAM, on the other hand, is volatile and would lose its contents as soon as power is removed, so it cannot hold those essential instructions. Cache is a tiny, very fast but volatile memory used by the CPU to speed up operations, not for storing boot firmware. Storage devices (hard drives or SSDs) hold the operating system and data, but the initial boot code has to exist and be accessible before the OS loads, which is why firmware lives in non-volatile memory such as ROM (often flash memory today). So the boot instructions are stored in ROM.