Practice for the CompTIA A+ Core 2 exam with 17 exam-style practice questions, instant answer reveals, and concise explanations of every correct answer. Topics include: A cybersecurity analyst is auditing your company's network logs and identifies that a USB mass storage device was previo. Follow @CertPunch and visit certpunch.com for more certification practice exams and study content.
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What you will practice
- A cybersecurity analyst is auditing your company's network logs and identifies that a USB mass storage device…
- A tablet's screen no longer rotates automatically between portrait and landscape. What should the user check…
- A customer's Android smartphone is only 6 months old but is becoming excessively slow. When questioned, the c…
- Which of the following is the BEST way to regularly prevent different security threats from occurring within…
- Your company is concerned about the possibility of power fluctuations that may occur and cause a large increa…
- You are working at the service desk when you receive a call from an upset user because their workstation cann…
Answers and explanations
Tap a question to expand the answer and the exam reasoning. Try to commit to your own pick first.
Q1. A cybersecurity analyst is auditing your company's network logs and identifies that a USB mass storage device was previously inserted into many of the company's servers. The logs also showed dozens of failed login attempts before a success…
Answer: E,F. Modify the AutoRun settings || Lockout the account after 3 failed login attempts
Modifying AutoRun settings prevents malicious code on USB storage from executing automatically. Configuring an account lockout directly defeats password guessing by disabling logins after failed attempts. While good security practices, the other options do not solve these specific USB and brute force vulnerabilities.
Q2. A tablet's screen no longer rotates automatically between portrait and landscape. What should the user check FIRST?
Answer: C. Verify that auto-rotate is enabled
Verifying the auto-rotate setting is the simplest first step because users frequently toggle this accidentally. Restarting the device is a logical second step if the setting is already enabled.
Q3. A customer's Android smartphone is only 6 months old but is becoming excessively slow. When questioned, the customer states it was acting fine until they recently installed a new stock market tracking app. What action should you take first…
Answer: C. Uninstall the app, reboot the phone, and reinstall the app
Uninstalling and reinstalling the problematic app is the best first step when a recent installation causes performance issues. A factory reset is an extreme measure that should only be used as a last resort.
Q4. Which of the following is the BEST way to regularly prevent different security threats from occurring within your network?
Answer: C. User training and awareness
Regular user training and awareness mitigates social engineering and phishing, which are the biggest threats to a network. Penetration testing might find vulnerabilities but doesn't actively prevent them from being exploited like educating your users does.
Q5. Your company is concerned about the possibility of power fluctuations that may occur and cause a large increase in the input power to their server room. What condition is this known as?
Answer: D. Power spikes
A power spike is a brief, massive over-voltage event that can severely damage server room equipment. A surge lasts slightly longer than a spike, while under-voltage events and blackouts involve power drops or total losses.
Q6. You are working at the service desk when you receive a call from an upset user because their workstation cannot receive any emails. Which of the following should you use to document this phone call?
Answer: A. Incident report
An incident report is the correct way to document a single user issue like an email outage. A knowledge base is used for reference, while an asset database tracks hardware, making neither suitable for documenting a specific support call.
Q7. Your Windows 10 system is booting up very slowly. Which of the following should you do to speed up the boot process?
Answer: A. Disable unnecessary programs from automatically starting up
Disabling unnecessary startup programs directly speeds up the boot process. Reinstalling Windows or rebuilding profiles are drastic measures, and Safe Mode is only a diagnostic tool.
Q8. Which of the following should be configured on a macOS system to enable the Smart Zoom feature on a user's MacBook trackpad?
Answer: D. Gestures
Gestures are the trackpad motions used to perform actions like Smart Zoom in macOS. The other terms describe basic movements but are not the macOS features used for trackpad configuration.
Q9. Which of the following file types are commonly used to create applications that can be run on Linux, macOS, and Windows?
Answer: A. .py
Python scripts use the .py extension and can run cross-platform on Linux, macOS, and Windows using an interpreter. The other extensions are generally limited to specific operating systems, such as .ps1 for Windows PowerShell.
Q10. Your Windows 10 workstation is attempting to boot up when it receives the following error, "BOOTMGR is missing; Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." To fix this, you insert your Windows installation disc and reboot into the Command Prompt under…
Answer: A. bootrec /fixboot
The bootrec /fixboot command writes a new boot sector to the system partition, resolving the missing BOOTMGR error. You can memorize bootrec commands for the exam since utilities like diskpart and chkdsk handle partitions and file errors instead.
Q11. You are installing a new file server at the offices of Dion Training. The entire building has a diesel generator installed to protect it from power outages. The file server must have zero downtime once placed into production. Which of the…
Answer: D. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
An uninterruptible power supply provides instant battery backup during a power failure, bridging the gap until the backup generator starts. A line conditioner only regulates voltage but cannot supply power during a complete outage.
Q12. Which of the following types of installations would you use on a system with slow performance or one that you cannot isolate a single cause of the system's issues?
Answer: C. Repair installation
A repair installation replaces corrupted operating system files while keeping user data and applications intact. This is ideal for systems with severe performance issues or unisolated software corruption. An in-place upgrade moves you to a newer operating system version.
Q13. A user with an older laptop running Windows 7 that has only 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of SSD, and a 1.7 GHz 64-bit processor. The user would like to upgrade to a newer OS since Windows 7 is now considered end-of-life. Which of the following opera…
Answer: B. Windows 10
Windows 10 is the best recommendation because it meets the strict hardware requirements and is still supported. Windows 11 requires four gigabytes of RAM and a sixty-four-gigabyte drive, making it incompatible with this laptop.
Q14. During the reconnaissance phase of a penetration test, you have determined that your client's employees all use Android smartphones that connect back to the corporate network over a secure VPN connection. Which of the following methods wou…
Answer: B. Use social engineering to trick a user into opening a malicious APK
Tricking a user into installing a malicious APK is the most reliable method to exploit an Android device. Since mobile devices are usually protected against remote web-based exploits, social engineering is often required to bypass the operating system's security controls.
Q15. A user receives a 'Windows Update service is not running' error. After the technician fixes the DLL registration, what should be done NEXT?
Answer: D. Reboot the computer
Rebooting the computer ensures the newly registered DLLs and service changes take full effect across the operating system. Restarting network services or rolling back drivers will not properly initialize the Windows Update components after modifying these core system files.
Q16. Your company works as a contractor to the military and has just finished replacing about 500 workstations across its secure network. You have been asked to properly dispose of the workstations and destroy the data on their hard disk drives…
Answer: A. Degauss each of the hard drives
Degaussing quickly wipes magnetic drives using a strong electromagnetic field. However, physical destruction is often preferred for high-security military disposal because degaussing SSDs is ineffective, making both viable.
Q17. During a disaster recovery, which of the following statements is true?
Answer: A. A virtual machine has less downtime than a physical server
Virtual machines can be restored or spun up rapidly from backups, minimizing downtime compared to physical servers. Rebuilding a physical server requires hardware replacements and driver configurations.
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