1. A computer system of a type having an at least one processor and at least one memory that comprises: a BIOS database stored in the memory that includes a representation according to a common syntax of at least one hardware component of the computer system and at least one feature associated with each hardware component and an initialization setting associated with each feature, for a hardware component having an associated driver; a BIOS program stored in the memory that includes instructions to cause the processor to determine an order of initialization for the hardware components that accommodates each initialization dependency of the hardware components, and a BIOS program stored in the memory to provide to each of the drivers in the order of initialization, the features and setting of the associated hardware component from the database.