Test your basic knowledge |

Comptia A + Certification

Instructions:
  • Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
  • If you are not ready to take this test, you can study here.
  • Match each statement with the correct term.
  • Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.

This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. A drive that can write either to CD-R discs or to specially designed CD-RW discs. In the case of the CD-RW discs - the drive can write more than once to the same portion of disc - overwriting old data.






2. The use by the operating system of a portion of hard disk as memory.






3. A name used by the Windows operating systems to identify any parallel port.






4. Aka digitizing tablet.






5. A hardware device or a program that monitors and records a user's every keystroke - usually without the user's knowledge.






6. Digital versatile disc (DVD) discs that can be written to once - but data cannot be overwritten. This term also refers to the drives that can write to these discs.






7. A laptop in which the display is an integrated digitizer.






8. A small group of computers communicating wirelessly with one another without the use of a centralized wireless access point (WAP).






9. Aka interrupt request line.






10. A special substance - also called thermal paste or heat sink compound - that increases the heat conductivity between a fan or heat sink and a chip.






11. In the laser printing process - a wire that passes a small positive charge to paper as it travels through the printer. This positive charge attracts the negatively charged toner particles on the drum to the paper.






12. The read-only DVD discs sold at retail stores - containing video or software and having a maximum capacity of 15.9 GB of data. This term also applies to the drives that can only read DVDs.






13. A set of standards for imaging devices - such as scanners and cameras - that is used in drivers and other software for these devices.






14. An interface standard developed by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) - it is used for both internal and external hard drives and optical drives as well as devices such as printers - modems - scanners - and many other peripherals.






15. In an operating system GUI - a tiny graphic representing an application - folder - disk - menu item - or other entity.






16. The amount of data that can travel over a network at a given time.






17. In a low-profile PC case - a card that plugs into a motherboard to allow other cards to be inserted at a right angle to the riser card and parallel to the motherboard. Also - a single expansion card containing multiple functions - such as modem - sou






18. In a CPU - the component that is primarily responsible for directing all the activities of the computer and the interactions of its components.






19. An EIDE drive setting that has the system select the drive's role (master or slave) based on the drive's position on the cable. If the drive is on the end of the cable - it is the master drive - and if it is in the middle of the cable - it is the sla






20. An area of a physical hard disk that defines space that will be used for logical drives.. (v.) To define the space to be used for logical drives using a special program - such as the Windows Setup program.






21. One or more chips in a computer's chipset that controls communications between the CPU and RAM on the motherboard.






22. Aka Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA).






23. A table on each file and folder in the NTFS file system that contains one or more access control entries.






24. A software fix for a single problem.






25. A network connection over long distances - traditionally using phone lines or satellite communications.






26. The primary input device for a PDA - shaped like a pen and used to press small keys on a keypad - tap the screen to select items - or write data on the screen.






27. In reference to parallel ports - a mode in which the parallel device connected to the parallel port can receive data but cannot send data. CMOS settings (system settings) may refer to this mode as "Transfer only."






28. A communications system now used for data communications via satellite that usually uses microwave radio frequencies and requires a dish antenna - receiver - and transmitter.






29. A DVD of any type that can contain data on only one side.






30. Programmable ROM. A ROM chip that can have programs added to it.






31. Aka local area network.






32. A network name used to identify a wireless network. Consisting of up to 32 characters - the SSID travels with the messages on the wireless network. All of the wireless devices on a WLAN must use the same SSID in order to communicate.






33. A server containing source files for installing software onto client computers. The shared folder containing these files is a software distribution point.






34. A circuit on a motherboard through which incoming power passes. Several voltage regulators maintain a steady voltage as demand goes up and down - with one or more voltage regulators for the various voltages required (5 volts - 12 volts - 3.3 volts -






35. Aka DDR2 SDRAM.






36. Aka Internet Control Message Protocol.






37. A wireless standard for using radio waves to communicate between devices. Class 3 Bluetooth devices (the most common) communicate at distances up to one meter.






38. Fiber-optic cable in which multiple light waves can pass simultaneously. Usually larger in diameter than single-mode fiber; and each wave uses a certain portion of the fiber cable for transmission.






39. Aka distributed denial of service attack.






40. Any power supply that provides high voltage - such as those in laser printers and CRTs.






41. In the laser printing process - the step in which the toner on the drum is transferred to the paper.






42. An option available in the Windows XP Backup program for recovering from damage that prevents the operating system from starting. It replaced the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) process in Windows 2000.






43. A card that fits into the PC Card interface - including both PC Card and CardBus cards. This type measures 85.6 millimeters long by 54 millimeters wide and measures 10.5 mm thick.






44. Aka plain-old telephone service.






45. A device that converts DC current to AC. An inverter is required in a laptop to provide the AC current required by the display.






46. A cell phone with Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) functions built in.






47. A virtual tunnel created between two endpoints over an untrusted network. The tunnel is created by encapsulating the packets within special packets for the tunnel. Other security methods are also usually applied to a VPN - such as encrypting the data






48. A Windows command prompt utility that uses the WFP (Windows 2000 and Windows XP) or WRP (Windows Vista and Windows 7) service to scan and verify the versions of all protected system files after you restart your computer.






49. The information transfer protocol of the World Wide Web (WWW). Included in HTTP are the commands Web browsers use to request Web pages from Web servers and then display them on the screen of the local computer.






50. In reference to networks - communications in both directions at the same time.