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A+ Certification 901 > Troubleshooting > Flashcards

Troubleshooting Flashcards

1
Q

What is CompTIA’s troubleshooting model?

A
  1. Identify the problem
  2. Establish probable cause
  3. Test the theory
  4. Establish plan and implement solution
  5. Verify the fix and do preventative measures
  6. Document findings
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2
Q

How should you go about identifying the problem?

A
  • Ask open ended questions
  • Review documentation (perhaps this problem has happened with another computer)
  • Back-up data before starting
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3
Q

What does it mean to establish a theory?

A

Determine if the problem is a hardware, software, or user error issue.

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4
Q

How should you test the theory?

A
  • Test one thing at a time

- Use the “split half” method (determine if it is a hardware or software issue)

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5
Q

What does it mean to document the findings?

A

Document your findings, actions, and outcomes.

Can help with:

  • Techs that come across similar problems.
  • Compliance.
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6
Q

What is Hiran’s Boot CD?

A

A boot environment where you can do various troubleshooting operations.

Ex: resetting the administrator password or taking care of a bad virus.

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7
Q

What are the common causes of unexpected shutdowns?

A
  1. Power Supply Overheating (This can happen if the power supply is too small for the computer)
  2. Electrical Short (Screws or other metal objects touching the motherboard can cause this)
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8
Q

What are the common causes of system lockups (freezes)?

A
  1. RAM errors (the RAM may not match the motherboard or there may be some other issue with it)
  2. Overheating
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9
Q

What are POST codes and how do you find the appropriate key?

A

They are the beeps that a computer sometimes gives to help identify a hardware issue.

You can find the appropriate key to interpret the beeps by looking up the motherboard and UEFI/BIOS

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10
Q

Why might a screen be blank when the computer is started up?

A
  1. Monitor is off or disconnected

2. A mismatch between the monitor, the video card, and the device driver.

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11
Q

What could cause the date and time to repeatedly reset to sometime in the past?

A
  1. CMOS battery failure (20-32 lithium ion coin battery)

2. The UEFI/BIOS settings are misconfigured.

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12
Q

A PC attempts to boot to an incorrect device. What could cause that?

A
  • Incorrect BIOS boot order.
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13
Q

What can cause a computer to continuously reboot?

A
  1. Check the power supply.
    - It may not be a high enough voltage to power everything.
    - Some of the power supply connectors may not be fully plugged in.
  2. One of the system components may have the wrong device driver. (probably something recently installed).
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14
Q

A computer is plugged in, but has no power. What can cause this?

A
  1. The power supply is unplugged.

2. The power supply is set to an incorrect voltage. (This would fry the system)

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15
Q

What can cause a system to overheat?

A
  1. The fans may not be working.
  2. There may be poor ventilation. (check for anything that may be blocking airflow and blow dust out with compressed air)
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16
Q

What can cause a computer to be abnormally loud?

A
  1. Squeaky fan. (applying WD-40 to the fan will fix it).

2. Stuck optical disk.

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17
Q

What can cause intermittent device failure? (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t).

A
  1. Unplug/reconnect device.

2. Check that the correct power supply voltage matches the bus connected to the device.

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18
Q

If the fans turn on, but the rest of the computer has no power, what’s wrong?

A

One of the power supply connectors is loose or unplugged, probably the motherboard.

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19
Q

What do you do if the indicator lights on the front of the computer are indicating that something is wrong?

A

Read the motherboard manual

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20
Q

If the indicator lights on the front of the computer aren’t coming on, what could be the problem?

A

There may be a problem with one of the wires.

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21
Q

What could cause smoke or a burning smell in a computer?

A
  1. Power supply or capacitor failure.
  • Use a class C fire extinguisher to put out the fire
  • Keep in mind that not all fires are visible.
22
Q

What do you do if you get a proprietary crash screen? (Blue screen of death)

A
  1. Write down the error codes and look them up.

2. Check to make sure the RAM is compatible with your mother board (there may be a device driver conflict).

23
Q

What is a distended capacitor and what can cause it?

A

It is a capacitor with a puffed up top (this happens when they go bad)

I can be caused by:

  1. Power Supply failure
  2. Motherboard Defect (check the warranty)
  3. The capacitor wearing out
24
Q

What is a loopback plug?

A

It is a small portable RJ-45 plug for testing connections. If you aren’t sure which of the Ethernet cables hooked up to the switch are currently connected to something on the other end, you can plug the cable into the loopback plug. If it lights up, that means the cable is live.

25
Q

What is a POST card?

A

Power On Self Test

It is a diagnostic tool that allows you to test a motherboard without having other components installed. (Used when checking to see if a motherboard works and also when building computers).

They can also be used to test other things like USB or RAM.

26
Q

What is read/write failure? What causes it?

A

It’s when someone tries to copy or save a file and gets an error.

  1. Defective Data cable (SATA cable)
  2. Defective hard disk (In this case, you want to immediately back up all the data and replace the hard drive)
27
Q

What are common causes of slow performance?

A
  1. Limited disk space (clear some space)

2. Fragmentation (defragment the hard drive)

28
Q

You hear a loud clicking noise, what’s causing it?

A

Imminent drive failure (back up the drive immediately)

29
Q

Mechanical drives write to a hard disk. What do SSD drives write to?

A

NAND chips.

Because SSDs write to these chips in a black box manner, defragmentation provides no benefit. In fact, it shortens the SSD’s life span, since it can only write a limited number of times.

30
Q

What can cause a failure to boot?

A
  1. Incorrect boot order in the BIOS/UEFI

2. Corrupted CMOS chip (if the CMOS chip is bad, you can either replace the chip itself or the whole motherboard)

31
Q

What could cause the drive to not be recognized?

A
  1. Loose or missing cables

2. If you have an old computer with PATA, the cables could be mis-jumpered

32
Q

What could cause the computer to say “operating system not found”?

A
  1. Incorrect boot order

2. The computer attempted to boot from a non-bootable disk.

33
Q

What can cause the “RAID not found” error message?

A
  1. RAID is disabled in BIOS

2. Defective or loose cables

34
Q

What is RAID BIOS?

A

If a computer has hardware RAID, it will have a separate RAID bios. Hardware RAID comes in the form of a RAID controller card in the tower. After getting into the system bios, you can hit another key combination to get into the RAID bios.

35
Q

What could cause RAID to stop working? (Your drive has gone offline)

A
  1. One or more of the hard drives that are part of the RAID set up have failed. (In this case, you need to replace the failed drives and regenerate the raid array)
36
Q

What causes S.M.A.R.T. errors?

A
  1. Imminent drive failure (back up the data immediately!)
37
Q

What is S.M.A.R.T.?

A

Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology

It enables your computer to anticipate drive failures. S.M.A.R.T. also helps you monitor several other attributes about the drives, such as temperature, health status, power on hours, etc.

38
Q

What is a demagnetizer?

A

Pass your screw driver through one of these to remove any magnetization that may be on it. This is important, since magnetism can wreck hard drives.

39
Q

What is an external enclosure?

A

It is a box with SATA and USB connections that allow you to easily transfer data from one hard drive to another.

An enclosure for servers will store many hard drives and will usually allow you to hot-swap drives, without worrying about lost data.

40
Q

What is File History?

A

It is a feature that you can get to from the control panel that allows you to bring back damaged or deleted files. (Note: you need to designate a drive to act as the repository for these files)

41
Q

What could cause a computer to boot into VGA mode? (VGA mode is when the display looks like DOS)

A
  1. Video driver issue (often caused by updates. Just remove the driver and roll back to before the update)
  2. Misconfiguration (you can configure a computer to boot into VGA mode on purpose, usually to work on driver issues. Another tech may have forgotten to put it back when finished)
42
Q

The monitor has a black screen that says “no input detected”. What’s wrong?

A
  1. Loose or disconnected cable
  2. Incorrect monitor input (if somebody pressed the input button, the monitor may be looking for input at the wrong port)
43
Q

What could cause an overheat shutdown?

A
  1. Video card fan failure

2. Poor ventilation (blow out air and possibly reroute cables for better airflow)

44
Q

What could cause dead pixels? (A portion of the screen is black, but not all of it)

A
  1. The screen is defective or damaged. (No way to fix it)
45
Q

What is an artifact? What causes them?

A

An artifact is when there is something on the screen that shouldn’t be there (like it’s burned into the screen).

  1. It may be part of an image on the screen, such as a screenshot set as the background.
  2. It may be the device driver or the video card. Examine them to see if they could be causing the issue.
46
Q

What causes color patterns to be incorrect?

A
  1. Incorrect color profile

2. Calibrate the display

47
Q

What can cause the monitor to be too dim?

A

Brightness/contrast needs adjusting (often times, the driver will come with a utility that allows you to tweak monitor settings easily)

48
Q

What causes an image to flicker?

A

There’s a problem with the analog to digital conversion. Try a different cable.

49
Q

Why would an image be distorted?

A

The resolution is too high for the monitor (simply adjust the resolution)

50
Q

What causes distorted geometry? (when the image looks tilted)

A

Adjust the resolution and/or aspect ratio (monitor settings)

A+ Certification 901 (9 decks)

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