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Answers

1. A. User Accounts would enable you to create a new user account in Windows XP.

2. B. In Windows XP, Fast User Switching enables you to change to another user account without logging out of the current user account.

3. D. Of the choices listed, oddvr88* would be the best password; it has a non-alphanumeric character, which makes it more difficult for a hacker to crack.

4. A. Members of the Users group in Windows 2000 can create a group, but they can only manage groups that they create; they are not able to edit the Registry or access critical system files.

5. D. The User Account Control feature in Windows Vista provides a permission dialog for Standard Users to enter administrator credentials to accomplish various tasks normally reserved for the Administrators group.

6. D. The Take Ownership permission enables an administrator to change the ownership of a file without knowing the user account password for that file.

7. C. The key here is that you are copying from an NTFS hard drive to a FAT32 USB drive. Copying from an NTFS-based partition to a FAT- or FAT32-based partition creates two copies of the object; the copy of the object in the new location has no effective permissions at all.

8. D. The Shared Documents set of folders is available to all users on a computer in Windows XP.

9. A, B. Windows XP Home and Windows XP Media Center do not allow you to disable Simple File Sharing.

10. A. EFS file systems enable you to encrypt an image, thus making it unviewable by any account but your own.

CHAPTER 17

Maintaining and Troubleshooting Windows

In this chapter, you will learn how to

Maintain Windows

Optimize Windows

Troubleshoot Windows

Every computer running a Windows operating system requires occasional optimization to keep the system running snappily, ongoing maintenance to make sure nothing goes wrong, and troubleshooting when the system doesn’t work correctly. Not that long ago, Windows had a bad rap as being difficult to maintain and challenging when troubleshooting problems. That’s no longer true. Microsoft used its decades of experience with operating systems to search for ways to make the tasks of maintaining and troubleshooting less onerous. They’ve done such a good job with the latest versions of Windows that, out of the box, they are easy to optimize and maintain, although troubleshooting—and all operating systems share this—is still a bit of a challenge.

The chapter starts with maintenance and optimization, so let’s make sure you know what these two terms mean. Maintenance means jobs you do from time to time to keep Windows running well, such as running hard drive utilities. CompTIA sees optimization as jobs you do to your Windows system to make it better—a good example is adding RAM. This chapter covers the standard maintenance and optimization activities performed on Windows and the tools techs use to perform them.

The last part of this chapter dives into troubleshooting Windows, examining steps you can take to bring a system back from the brink of disaster. You’ll learn techniques for recovering a PC that won’t boot and a PC that almost boots into Windows but fails.

Essentials

Maintaining Windows

Maintaining Windows can be compared to maintaining a new automobile. Of course, a new automobile comes with a warranty, so most of us just take it to the dealer to get work done. In this case, you are the mechanic, so you need to think as an auto mechanic would think. First, an auto mechanic needs to apply recalls when the automaker finds a serious problem. For a PC tech, that means keeping the system patches announced by Microsoft up to date. You also need to check on the parts that wear down over time. On a car that might mean changing the oil or rotating the tires. In a Windows system that includes keeping the hard drive and Registry organized and uncluttered.

Patches, Updates, and Service Packs

Updating Windows has been an important, but often neglected, task for computer users. Typically, Microsoft finds and corrects problems with