Hardware & Operating Systems
15 free questions with worked answers, and 129 more in the full bank.
Free questions
A company requires all corporate laptops to have their hard drives encrypted to protect data in case of theft. Which Windows feature provides full volume encryption?
3 marks · Medium
Which edition of Windows 10/11 is the minimum requirement to join an Active Directory domain?
1 mark · Easy
A technician suspects a device driver is causing system instability. Which tool allows them to view hardware conflicts, update drivers, or roll back to a previous driver version?
4 marks · Hard
You run `sfc /scannow` and it reports `Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them`. What is the NEXT best step?
3 marks · Medium
A macOS user wants to restore a deleted file from two days ago. Which built-in utility should they use?
3 marks · Medium
A Linux admin needs to assign read, write, and execute permissions to the owner of a script, but only read and execute to the group and others. Which command achieves this?
4 marks · Hard
A user is trying to install an unverified application. A prompt appears asking for administrator credentials to allow the installation. What Windows security feature is triggering this prompt?
1 mark · Easy
A system administrator wrote a script to automate the creation of Active Directory users and saved it with a .ps1 extension. Which language was used?
3 marks · Medium
A user experiences a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) with the stop code "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL". What is the MOST common cause of this error?
4 marks · Hard
A technician has just finished replacing a faulty power supply in a user's PC and verified that it boots successfully into Windows. What is the FINAL step of the CompTIA troubleshooting methodology?
3 marks · Medium
A user wants to upgrade their Windows 10 Home PC to a version that supports Microsoft Hyper-V and remote desktop hosting. Which edition should they purchase?
1 mark · Easy
An administrator needs to enforce password complexity rules across all computers in a domain. Which Windows tool should they use?
3 marks · Medium
A technician is trying to format a stubborn USB drive that fails formatting in File Explorer. Which command-line tool allows for low-level partition management?
4 marks · Hard
A user wants to view the error logs for an application that keeps crashing. Which Windows utility provides detailed logs of system and application events?
1 mark · Easy
Which macOS utility is the equivalent of Windows File Explorer, used for browsing files and applications?
3 marks · Medium
More Hardware & Operating Systems questions (page 2 of 3)
Answers and explanations are in the full bank.
- During routine technical work, which statement about an operating-system kernel should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- During routine technical work, which statement about an operating-system file system should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- During routine technical work, which statement about the chmod command should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- During routine technical work, which statement about the sudo command should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- During routine technical work, which statement about a page fault should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- During routine technical work, which statement about operating-system patching should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- During routine technical work, which statement about a no-power troubleshooting sequence should guide the technician? · 3 marks
- How many bytes are in 223 MiB, using binary units? · 3 marks
- An array of 19 × 12 TB disks is configured as RAID 6. How much usable capacity results? · 3 marks
- Which term describes firmware that initialises hardware and starts the operating system? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Kernel? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is RAID? · 3 marks
- Which term describes software letting the operating system talk to a piece of hardware? · 3 marks
- Which term describes combining disks for redundancy, performance or both? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Virtual memory? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Device driver? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is BIOS/UEFI? · 3 marks
- Which term describes the core of an operating system, managing hardware and processes? · 3 marks
- Which term describes using disk space to extend apparent RAM by paging? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Deadlock? · 3 marks
- Which term describes two or more processes each waiting for a resource the other holds? · 3 marks
- Which term describes a unit of execution sharing memory with others in the same process? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Thread? · 3 marks
- Which term describes fast storage holding recently or frequently used data? · 3 marks
- Which term describes a running program with its own memory space? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Process? · 3 marks
- In hardware & operating systems, what is Cache? · 3 marks
- A supervisor tests your knowledge of no-power hardware diagnosis. Which answer is best? · 4 marks
- Which option best describes 24-pin ATX connector? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A computer emits a memory-related POST code after a new RAM module is installed. What should be checked first? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A workstation powers on and completes startup sounds, but no image appears after a graphics card was replaced. Which checks are most relevant? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A desktop randomly restarts under combined CPU and GPU load, and PSU rail measurements fall outside specification. What is the likely cause? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A processor reaches its thermal limit seconds after startup even though its fan spins. What installation issue should be investigated? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A drive reports rapidly increasing reallocated-sector and pending-sector counts. What should be done? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: An M.2 drive fits physically but does not appear because the slot supports SATA only while the drive uses NVMe. What is the correct diagnosis? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A RAID 5 array is rebuilding after one disk failure while another member reports media errors. What is the main concern? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: Secure Boot was enabled, and an older unsigned boot component no longer starts. What does this show? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A TPM-protected encrypted drive requests recovery after the motherboard was replaced. Why is recovery expected? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A system repeatedly restarts before the login screen after a driver update. What is the best recovery path? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A Linux volume remounts read-only after detecting file-system errors. What should the administrator do? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: One process consumes nearly all CPU while other processes wait. What evidence should be collected? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: An application's memory usage rises continuously until the system begins heavy paging. Which software fault is likely? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A newly installed device shows an error in Device Manager and no compatible driver is loaded. What should be done? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A system with adequate RAM uses a page file occasionally during normal operation. How should this be interpreted? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A shared script is executable by its owner but not by members of the assigned group. Which settings should be checked? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A sudo rule grants a support group unrestricted root shell access when only one service restart is required. What should be changed? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A systemd service fails immediately with an exit code after a configuration edit. What should be reviewed? · 3 marks
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: An operating-system update fails because the system partition lacks free space. What is the appropriate response? · 1 mark
- During a workshop assessment, the reported condition is: A full-disk image exists, but no one knows whether it contains the encryption recovery key or boot partitions. What should be done? · 3 marks
- In Hardware & Operating Systems (Operating systems), a certification question asks about process. Which answer is correct? · 1 mark
- A certification question asks about Secure Boot. Which answer is correct? · 3 marks
- A certification question asks about power-on self-test. Which answer is correct? · 3 marks
- A technician is documenting simultaneous multithreading. Which statement belongs in the notes? · 3 marks
- A technician is documenting RAID 0. Which statement belongs in the notes? · 3 marks
- A technician is documenting Linux chmod. Which statement belongs in the notes? · 4 marks
- A technician is documenting full-disk encryption. Which statement belongs in the notes? · 4 marks
- A technician is documenting firmware beep or LED code. Which statement belongs in the notes? · 4 marks
- A certification question asks about motherboard chipset. Which answer is correct? · 3 marks
- A certification question asks about RAID 1. Which answer is correct? · 3 marks
- Hardware inventory HW4-M1 contains 2 memory modules of 8 GB each. What total installed RAM is recorded? · 1 mark