Essential Computer Maintenance: Practices and Solutions
Posted on Feb 12, 2025 in Computers
Essential Computer Maintenance
Practice 1: BIOS Fundamentals
- Question: Name three basic functions of the BIOS.
- Answer: Stores information on the hard disk, manages cache memory, and saves the date and time.
- Question: What is POST?
- Answer: It is the BIOS’s check of the video card, microprocessor, RAM, HDD, and other devices.
- Question: In which BIOS settings can hard drives be configured?
- Answer: IDE HDD autodetection.
- Question: In which BIOS settings can I turn off the fan, monitor, and hard disk?
- Answer: POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP.
- Question: Where can I change device interrupt settings to resolve PnP conflicts?
- Answer: PNP / PCI Configuration.
- Question: How does copying the BIOS ROM to RAM help?
- Answer: It can increase performance.
- Question: When is low-level formatting from the BIOS advisable?
- Answer: To reorganize the disk structure and eliminate viruses resistant to normal formatting.
Practice 2: Computer Systems
- Question: Mention four types of computers and give an example of use for each.
- Answer:
- Supercomputers: Scientific research
- Mainframes: Financial institutions
- Minicomputers: Network management
- Microcomputers: Household and office use
- Question: What are the differences between buying a minicomputer and a microcomputer?
- Answer: Price, capacity, and utility.
- Question: What makes up a computer system?
- Answer: Power supply, motherboard, storage units, and modem.
- Question: How do connectors differ from each other?
- Answer: Size and shape.
- Question: What types of video cards are currently available?
- Answer: VGA, SVGA, UVGA.
- Question: What is the difference between RAM and ROM?
- Answer: RAM is random access memory, and ROM is read-only memory.
Practice 3: Maintenance and Troubleshooting
- Question: What determines the time allocated to computer maintenance?
- Answer: Number of hours of operation, applications running, and environment.
- Question: Mention at least 5 hard disk abnormalities that can be corrected.
- Answer: Insufficient space, unnecessary files, cross-linked files, and high fragmentation.
- Question: What are the main causes of a damaged boot sector?
- Answer: Virus infection, abrupt power failure, electric shock, and age of the disk.
- Question: How does a high percentage of file fragmentation affect a hard drive?
- Answer: Your computer’s speed decreases.
- Question: What is the problem with a highly fragmented file?
- Answer: Increased access times.
- Question: If a Trojan is a malicious virus, what is the disadvantage of it being installed on my system?
- Answer: It monitors your activity, reads keystrokes, and saves images as you navigate.
- Question: How does spyware affect my computer’s performance?
- Answer: It shows information that is often a nuisance in everyday use.
Practice 4: Hardware and Software Considerations
- Question: Where can I buy a base for a brand-name computer versus a clone?
- Answer: Replacement problems, specialized care, service costs, and warranty issues.
- Question: What are the two architectures of microprocessors, and mention a feature of each?
- Answer:
- CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer): Uses multiple clock cycles per operation.
- RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer): Works faster and uses fewer clock cycles.
- Question: What motherboard problems are difficult to detect?
- Answer: Freezing, rebooting without warning, and sudden disconnection from the Internet. These faults are difficult to detect because they are similar to faults caused by other components.
- Question: What are drivers?
- Answer: Software that acts as an intermediary between hardware and the operating system.
- Question: Why are drivers needed?
- Answer: To maximize the functionality of the device for which it has been designed.
- Question: What criteria should I consider when updating software?
- Answer: Programs that run at higher speeds and exploit new hardware performance.
- Question: What are the main causes of computer failure?
- Answer: Heat, dust, extreme working conditions, higher voltage, and vibration.
Practice 5: Hard Drives and Data Recovery
- Question: What are the two types of structures for connecting hard drives to a computer?
- Answer: IDE and SCSI.
- Question: What is the logical structure of a hard disk?
- Answer: Boot sector, partitioned space, and unpartitioned space.
- Question: What steps should be taken for more reliable data recovery?
- Answer: Do not store data in the root directory, defragment drives regularly, and do not store important files on flash drives.
- Question: Mention three types of file systems currently used.
- Answer: FAT, FAT32, NTFS.