CompTIA A+ Practice Test (220-1201)

Buzzing or crackling that begins immediately after a speaker replacement almost always points to a bad physical connection: the small speaker cable or the driver itself is not fully seated, so the signal intermittently opens or shorts and the cone can vibrate against the chassis. Reseating the cable and mounting the speaker correctly normally restores clear audio. A leaky speaker enclosure can affect frequency response but rarely creates an electrical buzz, electromagnetic interference is typically heard as faint hiss or clicks, and an impedance mismatch can indeed cause distortion-but technicians usually install the manufacturer-specified part, so a loose connection is by far the more likely cause.

Enabling modern wireless encryption (such as WPA2 or WPA3) scrambles every frame with strong cryptography, so intercepted traffic cannot be read without the key. Simply lowering the access point's transmit power, hiding or disabling the SSID broadcast, or enabling MAC address filtering may deter casual users, but they do not encrypt traffic and can be bypassed with freely available tools.

Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) displays are known for their ability to produce true blacks and high contrast ratios. This is because OLED pixels emit their own light, which can be completely turned off to achieve a true black, unlike Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) that rely on a backlight that cannot be turned off for individual pixels. This advantage allows OLED displays to have superior contrast ratios compared to other types, such as In-Plane Switching (IPS) or Twisted Nematic (TN) displays that are types of LCDs and cannot achieve the same level of black since they use a constant backlight.

Rapid elasticity is the characteristic of cloud services that allows systems to automatically scale resources up or down in response to fluctuating demand. This ensures that during peak times such as holiday sales, the e-commerce application can handle spikes in traffic without any manual intervention. High availability concerns the systems' ability to remain operational even during faults or maintenance, while metered utilization deals with tracking resource usage for billing. File synchronization is related to keeping files updated across systems but doesn't address scaling resources based on demand.

The most common issue after eliminating problems with the charging cable and adapter would be a damaged or dirty charging port. Lint, debris, or damage can prevent the charging cable from making proper contact with the internal connectors, leading to improper charging. Examining for water damage is important, as it can cause various issues including charging problems, but charging ports are more accessible for users to tamper with and commonly collect foreign matter. While replacing the battery might resolve charging issues if the battery itself is failing, this is less likely the cause if third-party cables and multiple adapters have been ruled out and it is often more complex than simply cleaning the port. Similarly, checking for software updates could potentially resolve battery management software problems, but it would not make sense as the next step given the physical nature of the client's complaint.

Mini-ITX is the smallest of the common motherboard form factors, making it the ideal choice for compact computer builds where space is a primary concern. In terms of size, Mini-ITX (170mm x 170mm) is smaller than Micro-ATX (244mm x 244mm), which is smaller than the standard ATX form factor (305mm x 244mm). BTX is an older form factor that was designed by Intel to replace ATX but did not gain widespread adoption and is now considered obsolete.

The eight-position modular connector informally called an "RJ45" is specified by the TIA/EIA-568A and T568B wiring schemes for four-pair copper Ethernet cabling. RJ11 is a 6-position connector primarily for telephone lines, the F-type connector is a threaded coaxial fitting used with cable and satellite TV, and an LC connector terminates fiber-optic strands rather than copper pairs.

Sources:

• T568A and T568B Wiring Standards article confirms that both standards terminate four-pair cable in RJ45 connectors.
• Registered jack entry notes that RJ11 is used for single-line telephone service.
• F connector article describes its use with coaxial cable for TV and satellite signals.
• LC connector reference identifies it as a small-form-factor fiber-optic connector.

Plenum-rated cables have a special jacket made of fire-retardant materials. In the event of a fire, this jacket is designed to burn slowly and produce minimal amounts of smoke and hazardous fumes. This is a critical safety feature for cables run in plenum spaces, which are areas used for air circulation (like the space above a drop ceiling), as it helps prevent the spread of fire and toxic smoke throughout a building via the ventilation system.

SSH is a protocol used for secure remote login and other secure network services. It is commonly associated with port number 22, thus the correct answer is 22. It's important to memorize standard port numbers as they are frequently referenced in networking and security tasks. Port 20/21 is used for FTP, port 25 is for SMTP, and port 80 is for HTTP, making these options incorrect for SSH.

Due to licensing agreements macOS cannot officially be run on anything but approved Apple hardware. You can run macOS as a virtual machine but the host OS must also be macOS running on Apple hardware. From a technical perspective it is possible to run macOS on non-official hardware, there is an online community dedicated to this called "Hackintosh". While technically possible, you should not do this in an enterprise environment due to the license violations it involves. Even Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses real Mac hardware instead of other commercially available options (more info).

TXT records are used to hold free-form text of any type, often used for domain ownership verification by various services, or to implement email security measures like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. An A record, on the other hand, maps a domain name to an IPv4 address and is not meant for descriptive text. The MX record directs mail to an email server and cannot hold descriptive text beyond the mail server's name. Similarly, an AAAA record links a domain with an IPv6 address.

In a RAID 6 configuration, you can lose up to two drives and still maintain fault tolerance. RAID 6 uses two parity blocks distributed across the drives, which allows the system to recover from the simultaneous failure of two drives without data loss. If a third drive fails, the array would lose data integrity.

On most BIOS implementations, a repeating series of short beeps signifies that POST detected a critical hardware fault-commonly with RAM, the motherboard's power delivery, or another essential component. It is not an indication of a successful POST; a single short beep (IBM/Award) or a single long beep (AMI) generally signals that no errors were found. Technicians should reference the motherboard or BIOS documentation for exact meanings and begin hardware diagnostics, often starting with reseating or replacing memory modules.

Port 110 is used for Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3), which is designed to retrieve emails from a mail server. When using POP3, emails are downloaded to the client and can be deleted from the server thereafter, depending on the client's configuration. This is useful for users who want to manage their emails locally and keep the server mailbox from running out of space.

The technician should use an eSATA cable, which is specifically designed to connect external SATA hard drives to an eSATA port on a computer motherboard or an eSATA PCIe card. eSATA cables are made to handle the external transfer speeds of SATA devices, which in this case is necessary for utilizing the high-speed data transfer capabilities of the existing interface on the workstation's motherboard efficiently. Other interfaces like USB or Ethernet are either not meant for direct hard drive connectivity or would significantly limit the transfer speed of the eSATA interface.