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 protocol that transfers e-mail messages between mail servers. Clients also use this protocol to send e-mail to mail servers.






2. The use of a biometric for authentication.






3. A drive on a computer that can play music CDs and read data CDs - but cannot write to CDs.






4. An early international standard for sending voice and data over digital telephone wires. ISDN uses existing telephone circuits or higher-speed conditioned lines to get speeds of either 64 Kbps or 128 Kbps. ISDN lines also have the ability to carry vo






5. 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.






6. A power supply standard that has both the 20-pin connector for the motherboard and a 4-pin 12 V connector.






7. A network connection device that passes traffic between two networks - using the physical address (MAC address) of the destination device.






8. Used to represent the chrominance signal in S-Video.






9. A video interface - also called Super Video - that transmits video using two signals






10. A VESA standard for graphics adapters with a maximum graphics resolution of 1024






11. A RAM module designed for subcompact and laptop computers. It is half the size of a SoDIMM module.






12. An early technology for increasing the performance of DRAM.






13. A special disk used for recovering an OS failure in Windows 2000. It requires that you create the ERD while the system is healthy - and then use it - along with the Windows Setup CD - to repair Windows.






14. 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.






15. Aka Small Computer System Interface.






16. A standard for interconnecting electronic musical instruments to communicate with computers and among themselves.






17. Aka paging file.






18. A type of KVM switch that controls computers over a distance that is a function of the cabling and protocols it uses. The two types of switches are local remote KVM switch and KVM over IP.






19. The smallest laptop type - weighing less than 3 pounds. Aka also netbook and mini-notebook.






20. Aka systray.






21. An optional toolbar you can add to the taskbar just to the right of the Start button. Shortcuts on this bar launch with a single-click.






22. An early method for addressing the disparity between the drive geometry supported by PC BIOSs and the physical geometry of drives.






23. A cooling fan mounted directly on the case - as opposed to a power supply fan - which is inside the power supply.






24. In reference to IDE PATA drives - the master drive on the first channel.






25. Aka floating-point unit.






26. Aka Wired Equivalent Privacy.






27. A remote KVM switch that captures the keyboard - video - and mouse signals - encodes them into IP packets - and sends them over an IP network.






28. 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






29. A standards organization - of which the T10 SCSI committee maintains the SCSI standard.






30. A memory module (stick) that installs into matching DIMM sockets found on many motherboards. The word "dual" refers to the separate pins or connections on both sides of the module and socket.






31. The order in which the BIOS will search devices for an operating system to start.






32. The term used for dynamic space allocation that can be formatted with a file system.






33. A single-sided - single-layer digital versatile disc (DVD) that stores 4.7 GB of data - or over two hours of video.






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






35. Data communications over the cellular telecommunications networks.






36. A strap designed to discharge static electricity from your body. One end attaches to the wrist - whereas the other end attaches to a grounded object.






37. In a CPU - special memory that resides outside the CPU's core and is used to temporarily store instructions and data in order to increase the processing speed. Also called Level 2 (L2) cache and Level 3 (L3) cache - depending on the design of the CPU






38. This GUI utility will display a system summary of the hardware - operating system - and other software.






39. In the laser printing process - the stage in which the printer's high-voltage power supply (HVPS) conducts electricity to the primary corona wire so it can pass the voltage on to the printer's electro-photosensitive drum.






40. Aka double-data rate (DDR) SDRAM.






41. Also called striping with distributed parity or striping with interleave parity - this RAID method involves a set of disks in which every time data is written to disk - a portion is written to each disk in turn - creating a "stripe" of data across th






42. 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.






43. The Windows Vista and Windows 7 tool for gathering and viewing performance data involving memory - disks - processors - network - and other objectives.






44. An Advanced Options menu choice that simply causes Windows to restart normally (if it can).






45. The specific requirements for the level of CPU - amount of memory - and size of the hard disk for the computer on which an operating system can be installed.






46. A data encryption technology used for securing data transmitted over the Internet. TLS succeeded SSL.






47. In a laser printer - a metal drum with an electro-photosensitive coating to which a charge can be applied by a laser beam.






48. At first - a terminal was not much more than a display - a keyboard - and the minimal circuitry for connecting to the mainframe. Now - a terminal can be a computer running Windows or other operating system - plus terminal client emulation software th






49. A special terminating stick that must be inserted into the open RIMM sockets.






50. Device that stores digital data on magnetized media - such as floppy disks - the metal platters in hard disk drives - and magnetic tape media used in tape drives.