The CompTIA 220-902 exam is one of two exams requires to obtain the CompTIA A+ (900 series). This exam will cover operating systems like Windows, Macintosh OSX and Linux as well as topics like security, software troubleshooting and operational procedures.
1) True or false: The best tool for cleaning a dusty desktop PC case is a vacuum.
You should refrain from using a vacuum for the purposes of cleaning computer components, as they can generate static electricity that can destroy sensitive electronics. Compressed air is the often used to remove dust in the place of a vacuum.
This question is filed under objective 5, Operational Procedures
Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material The charge remains until it is able to move away by means of an electric current or electrical discharge Static electricity is named in contrast with current electricity, which flows through wires or other conductors and transmits energyA static electric charge can be created whenever two surfaces contact and have worn and separated, and at least one of the surfaces has a high resistance to electric current (and is therefore an electrical insulator) The effects of static electricity are familiar to most people because people can feel, hear, and even see the spark as the excess charge is neutralized when brought close to a large electrical conductor… Read More
2) When issues are reported, what is the best method or technology to track them?
The best method for tracking issues and maintaining a central repository that can be used for incident monitoring, knowledge-basing and reporting is a ticketing system.
This question is filed under objective 5, Operational Procedures
An issue tracking system (also ITS, trouble ticket system, support ticket, request management or incident ticket system) is a computer software package that manages and maintains lists of issues Issue tracking systems are generally used in collaborative settings—especially in large or distributed collaborations—but can also be employed by individuals as part of a time management or personal productivity regimen These systems often encompass resource allocation, time accounting, priority management, and oversight workflow in addition to implementing a centralized issue registry In the institutional setting, issue tracking systems are commonly used in an organization's customer support call center to create, update, and resolve reported… Read More
3) True or false: It is best practice to allow system administrators to have administrator privileges associated with their normal user account.
Best practices dictate that administrators should have a secondary account with administrator privileges, separate from their main user account. This leads to improved security due to maintaining separation of duties and minimizes damage done if user accounts are compromised.
This question is filed under objective 3, Security
Separation of duties (SoD also known as Segregation of Duties) is the concept of having more than one person required to complete a task In business the separation by sharing of more than one individual in one single task is an internal control intended to prevent fraud and error The concept is alternatively called segregation of duties or, in the political realm, separation of powers In democracies, the separation of legislation from administration serves a similar purpose The concept is addressed in technical systems and in information technology equivalently and generally addressed as redundancy … Read More
4) The Microsoft utility commonly known as SFC is an abbreviation for the words _____________.
SFC or System File Checker is used to restore corrupted files in Microsoft Windows.
This question is filed under objective 4, Software Troubleshooting
System File Checker (SFC) is a utility in Microsoft Windows that allows users to scan for and restore corruptions in Windows system files … Read More
5) You have been tasked with deploying full device encryption on Windows 10 devices in your office. Choose the Microsoft provided utility to achieve this task.
Microsoft BitLocker is the full disk encryption provided by...you guessed it...Microsoft! BitLocker has been available for Windows since Vista.
This question is filed under objective 3, Security
BitLocker is a full volume encryption feature included with Microsoft Windows versions starting with Windows Vista It is designed to protect data by providing encryption for entire volumes By default, it uses the AES encryption algorithm in cipher block chaining (CBC) or XTS mode with a 128-bit or 256-bit key CBC is not used over the whole disk it is applied to each individual sector … Read More
6) A user has described an issue to you that requires your attention. While you think you grasp the concept of what they are asking for, the best course of action would be:
While the your user may appreciate (or be terribly offended) by these other actions, your best action would be to ensure you understand the user's issue by restating it and letting the user clarify their issue.
This question is filed under objective 5, Operational Procedures
The Golden Retriever is a medium-large gun dog that was bred to retrieve shot waterfowl, such as ducks and upland game birds, during hunting and shooting parties The name "retriever" refers to the breed's ability to retrieve shot game undamaged due to their soft mouth Golden retrievers have an instinctive love of water, and are easy to train to basic or advanced obedience standards They are a long-coated breed, with a dense inner coat that provides them with adequate warmth in the outdoors, and an outer coat that lies flat against their bodies and repels water Golden retrievers are well suited to residency in suburban or country environments… Read More
7) Personally Identifiable Information (PII) should be safeguarded from unauthorized access. Which of the following would be considered PII?
An individual's driver's license number would be considered PII. While you may be tempted to select medical diagnosis, that would be considered HIPPA information.
This question is filed under objective 5, Operational Procedures
Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates has four common variants based on personal or personally, and identifiable or identifying Not all are equivalent, and for legal purposes the effective definitions vary depending on the jurisdiction and the purposes for which the term is being used Under European and other data protection regimes, which centre primarily on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the term "personal data" is significantly broader, and determines the scope of the regulatory regime… Read More
8) A client has received a DLL not found error and has reported the issue to you. The client has also informed you that they have downloaded the the missing DLL file from the internet and believes they have resolved the issue. What is the first action should you take to regarding this situation?
DLL not found errors should never be remediated by downloading the missing DLL. A missing DLL can be a symptom of a greater issue, but more pressingly DLL download sites can deploy malware via the downloads or open security loopholes on your PC. You should quarantine the PC, verifying that there has been no intrusion or compromise of the system before proceeding with investigating the missing DLL's root cause.
This question is filed under objective 4, Software Troubleshooting
Dynamic-link library (DLL) is Microsoft's implementation of the shared library concept in the Microsoft Windows and OS/2 operating systems These libraries usually have the file extension DLL, OCX (for libraries containing ActiveX controls), or DRV (for legacy system drivers) The file formats for DLLs are the same as for Windows EXE files – that is, Portable Executable (PE) for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, and New Executable (NE) for 16-bit Windows As with EXEs, DLLs can contain code, data, and resources, in any combination Data files with the same file format as a DLL, but with different file extensions and possibly containing only resource sections, can be called resource DLLs… Read More
9) There have been reports of a Windows server system running slowly and a member of the application support team has suggested adding more CPU and memory resources to the virtual machine. Before doing this you should check the _________ utility.
The Windows Performance Monitor is used to check the state of resource usage and should be used as part of the process of verifying that additional resources are required.
This question is filed under objective 1, Windows Operating Systems
Performance Monitor (known as System Monitor in Windows 9x, Windows 2000 and Windows XP) is a system monitoring program introduced in Windows NT 31 It monitors various activities on a computer such as CPU or memory usage This type of application may be used to determine the cause of problems on a local or remote computer by measuring the performance of hardware, software services, and applicationsIn Windows 9x, System Monitor is not installed automatically during Windows setup, but could be installed manually using the Add/Remove Programs applet, located in the Control Panel It has few counters available and offers little in the way of customization… Read More
10) A kernel panic is an error that can take place in Unix based systems that most closely resembles a similar fatal error in a Windows environment. Select the most similar fatal error.
A kernel panic most closely resembles the Blue Screen of Death or "BSOD" in Windows environments. A kernel panic or BSOD typically results from a fatal error that requires the system to shut down to prevent permanent damage.
This question is filed under objective 4, Software Troubleshooting
A kernel panic (sometimes abbreviated as KP) is a safety measure taken by an operating system's kernel upon detecting an internal fatal error in which either it is unable to safely recover or continuing to run the system would have a higher risk of major data loss The term is largely specific to Unix and Unix-like systems For Microsoft Windows operating systems the equivalent term is "Stop error", resulting in a bug check screen that presents the bug check code on a blue background in early versions of Windows (colloquially known as a "Blue Screen of Death" or BSoD), or on a green background on the Xbox One platform as well as in Windows 10 preview builds… Read More
11) During your daily technical support duties you accidentally view a user's password as they enter it. You inadvertently committed a _______ attack.
The act of observing a user enter confidential, security-related information while they are unaware is referred to as shoulder surfing.
This question is filed under objective 3, Security
In computer security, shoulder surfing is a type of social engineering technique used to obtain information such as personal identification numbers (PINs), passwords and other confidential data by looking over the victim's shoulder Unauthorized users watch the keystrokes inputted on a device or listen to sensitive information being spoken, which is also known as eavesdropping … Read More
12) You have been tasked with determining why a service fails to start in a server test environment. There are numerous services required for the application to function, but a single service is failing to start upon boot. This service also happens to be the last service that is supposed to start. A delayed start is not required, nor is a manual start and the service is enabled. You can manually start the service and it will function normally until the next system reboot. The service is run under "System". Knowing these things you open up the "Services" application and check:
Based on the prompt for this question, the most likely cause is a dependency missing. This most likely means that a requirement for another service being active is not set. You should attempt to ensure that all dependencies are correctly enabled.
This question is filed under objective 4, Software Troubleshooting
In the contexts of software architecture, service-orientation and service-oriented architecture, the term service refers to a software functionality or a set of software functionalities (such as the retrieval of specified information or the execution of a set of operations) with a purpose that different clients can reuse for different purposes, together with the policies that should control its usage (based on the identity of the client requesting the service, for example) OASIS defines a service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description"… Read More
13) The Linux operating system has many command line base functions. For instance the command "sudo" is utilized to:
Sudo, which is a portmanteau of the words "superuser" and "do", is utilized to run applications in the security context of a superuser or another user with differing security permissions.
This question is filed under objective 2, Other Operating Systems & Technologies
sudo ( or ) is a program for Unix-like computer operating systems that allows users to run programs with the security privileges of another user, by default the superuser It originally stood for "superuser do" as the older versions of sudo were designed to run commands only as the superuser However, the later versions added support for running commands not only as the superuser but also as other (restricted) users, and thus it is also commonly expanded as "substitute user do" Although the latter case reflects its current functionality more accurately, sudo is still often called "superuser do" since it is so often used for administrative tasks… Read More
14) You are tasked with creating scripts that will run on a schedule, checking the status of various Windows system resources and services. Your boss has stated that they would prefer you to utilize a scripting language that is best suited for the task at hand and does not require you code basic resource and service-checking functionality for the task. You choose to utilize:
PowerShell would be the best choice of scripting language for this task as it has many pre-built commands for querying the status of Windows System resources and services. While all of the other choices, with the exception of Bash, would work for this task, they will likely require more effort being spent on the task than PowerShell.
This question is filed under objective 1, Windows Operating Systems
PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management framework from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-source and cross-platform on 18 August 2016 with the introduction of PowerShell Core The former is built on the NET Framework, the latter on NET Core In PowerShell, administrative tasks are generally performed by cmdlets (pronounced command-lets), which are specialized NET classes implementing a particular operation These work by accessing data in different data stores, like the file system or registry, which are made available to PowerShell via providers… Read More
15) A hypervisor is most commonly associated with which of the following technologies?
A hypervisor is used to host virtual machines and can be used for Linux, Windows and macOS environments.
This question is filed under objective 2, Other Operating Systems & Technologies
A hypervisor (or virtual machine monitor, VMM, virtualizer) is a kind of emulator it is computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources: for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine… Read More
16) You are copying several very large files to a remote server that experiences intermittent connectivity issues. Choose the tool that would be best used for this task.
Robocopy is the best option for copying files in this case. Robocopy has functionality to tolerate connection failure and still resume copying.
This question is filed under objective 1, Windows Operating Systems
Robocopy, for "Robust File Copy", is a command-line directory and/or file replication command for Microsoft Windows Robocopy functionally replaces Xcopy, with more options Created by Kevin Allen and first released as part of the Windows NT 40 Resource Kit, it has been a standard feature of Windows since Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 The command is robocopy … Read More
17) You are deploying a web server in a Windows environment and are tasked with ensuring that internal clients can access the resources hosted on the server via an internet browser. Firewall ports have been opened for 80, 443, 20, 21 and 23. Your server is running Windows Server 2012 R2 and it is configured with teamed NICs. Which service is most likely needed on this server?
IIS or Internet Information Services is the Windows term for the Web Server role. While, you may be tempted to choose Network Load Balancing (NLB) as the correct answer, please note that teamed NICs can operate without the NLB service implemented.
This question is filed under objective 2, Other Operating Systems & Technologies
Internet Information Services (IIS, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NNTP It has been an integral part of the Windows NT family since Windows NT 40, though it may be absent from some editions (eg Windows XP Home edition), and is not active by default … Read More
18) Which of the following best describes a statement that reflects the nature of a virtual machine?
Virtual machines can have resources allocated to them from the host without requiring that the virtual machine be powered down. This depends on the virtualization platform and guest OS specifically but in general you can "hot add" memory and CPU resources to virtual machines.
This question is filed under objective 2, Other Operating Systems & Technologies
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination Virtual machines differ and are organized by their function, shown here: System virtual machines (also termed full virtualization VMs) provide a substitute for a real machine They provide functionality needed to execute entire operating systems A hypervisor uses native execution to share and manage hardware, allowing for multiple environments which are isolated from one another, yet exist on the same physical machine Modern hypervisors use hardware-assisted… Read More
19) In terms of IT security, a mantrap is best described by one of the following statements.
A mantrap is often used to secure server rooms, distribution closets or IT resources that may be susceptible to attack by tailgaters.
This question is filed under objective 3, Security
A mantrap, air lock, sally port or access control vestibule is a physical security access control system comprising a small space with two sets of interlocking doors, such that the first set of doors must close before the second set opens Airlocks have a very similar design, allowing free ingress and egress while also restricting airflow In a manual mantrap, a guard locks and unlocks each door in sequence An intercom and/or video camera are often used to allow the guard to control the trap from a remote location In an automatic mantrap, identification may be required for each door, sometimes even possibly different measures for each door… Read More
20) Which of the following statements is true regarding the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit version of the Windows OS?
64-bit Windows is capable of utilizing in excess of 4 GB of RAM. While most modern processors can utilize 32-bit or 64-bit Windows, that has not always been the case.
This question is filed under objective 1, Windows Operating Systems
In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits (8 octets) wide Also, 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) and arithmetic logic unit (ALU) architectures are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size 64-bit microcomputers are computers in which 64-bit microprocessors are the norm From the software perspective, 64-bit computing means the use of machine code with 64-bit virtual memory addresses However, not all 64-bit instruction sets support full 64-bit virtual memory addresses x86-64 and ARMv8, for example, support only 48 bits of virtual address, with the remaining 16 bits of the virtual address required to be all 0's or all 1's, and… Read More
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