220-1101 Exam Questions and Answers

Digitizer failure

The digitizer is the transparent capacitive sensor layer that overlays the display and registers touch input. When a specific area of the screen becomes unresponsive while the rest still works, it is a classic sign of partial digitizer failure—often caused by cracks, impact damage, or a broken trace in that region's sensing grid. Unlike software glitches, this failure is localized and persistent, and it requires hardware repair, typically replacing the entire screen assembly.

Check the battery usage statistics in the settings menu

Checking the battery usage statistics in the settings menu is the correct first step because it provides a granular breakdown of which apps and system services have consumed power since the update. This data distinguishes between normal post-indexing activity and a sustained drain caused by a specific rogue app or a misbehaving background process, allowing the technician to make an evidence-based decision.

Faulty Wi-Fi antenna or module

A physical defect or disconnection of the internal Wi-Fi antenna or the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip prevents the SoC from communicating with the radio, so the operating system cannot detect the hardware and typically grays out the Wi-Fi toggle. Impact damage, liquid ingress, or a loose flexible cable can cause this. Unlike a software misconfiguration, this cannot be cleared by rebooting or resetting system settings, and it often persists even in Safe Mode.

Replace the charging port flex cable

The charging port flex cable is the physical interconnect between the Lightning connector and the logic board, carrying both power and data signals. It is a known failure point due to corrosion, bent pins, or internal wire breakage, and it can stop charging entirely while leaving the display fully functional. Replacing this cable restores the power path without affecting the screen.

Check BIOS settings for touchpad enable/disable

The BIOS/UEFI often has a setting to enable or disable the touchpad. If it is disabled, the touchpad will not appear in the OS or respond to function keys. Checking BIOS is the appropriate next step.

Display assembly

Correct. The display assembly includes the LCD/OLED panel and the backlight. A hardware fault in this component is the most likely cause of screen flickering and blackouts, especially since a factory reset did not fix it.

The new AP has its DHCP server enabled

If the AP's DHCP server is active, it will assign IP addresses that may not have the correct default gateway or DNS settings, or it may conflict with the main DHCP server, preventing proper routing to the internet.

Create a DHCP reservation on the router for the server's MAC address

A DHCP reservation on the router binds the server's MAC address to 192.168.1.10 within the DHCP scope. When the server requests a lease, the DHCP server checks its reservation table and always offers that same IP, preventing other devices from receiving it and eliminating conflicts. This approach is centrally managed, requires no OS-level manual configuration, and survives the server's NIC being replaced (as long as the MAC is updated in one place).

Switch

A switch adds multiple ports and keeps all devices on the same LAN segment, allowing them to obtain IP addresses from the router's DHCP server.

The switch port has a VLAN mismatch for the voice VLAN

The switch port is likely configured for data VLAN only, while the VoIP phone expects to tag its traffic with a separate voice VLAN ID. This mismatch prevents the phone from communicating with the call controller or obtaining an IP address on the correct subnet, even though PoE powers the device. The PC behind the phone works because it uses the untagged data VLAN, which is correctly configured, while the phone's voice traffic is misrouted.

The DHCP server has exhausted its IP pool

The DHCP server's address pool is the finite range of IP addresses it is configured to hand out. Once every address in the scope has been leased to a client, the server can no longer fulfill new lease requests or extend existing leases, so an affected computer fails to obtain a valid IPv4 address. Consequently, the operating system automatically falls back to Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA), assigning itself a 169.254.x.x address that cannot route beyond the local subnet. This commonly happens in networks where the number of devices exceeds the available pool or lease times are set too long, and it is a more likely cause than a cable fault because the computer was working previously and the link is still up.

The Ethernet cables between the switch and devices are faulty or of poor quality.

Correct. A faulty or low-quality cable is the most common reason for a Gigabit connection to fall back to 100 Mbps. The cable may have damage or exceed length specifications, forcing auto-negotiation to a lower speed.

The CPU will overheat because excess paste reduces heat transfer efficiency

Applying the correct amount of thermal paste is intended to fill microscopic imperfections in the mating surfaces, not to form a thick layer. Excess paste creates a thick, low-conductivity barrier between the CPU IHS and the heatsink base, increasing thermal resistance. Because the paste's thermal conductivity is far lower than that of the metal surfaces, the heat transfer is impeded, causing the CPU to run hotter and potentially throttle or sustain damage.

NVMe M.2

NVMe M.2 drives connect directly to the motherboard's PCIe bus, typically via Gen3 or Gen4 lanes, delivering sequential read/write speeds of 1.5 to 7 GB/s or more. Their low-latency command queue and high throughput make them the optimal choice for a boot drive, far surpassing SATA-based storage. They are physically keyed to fit M.2 slots and are the fastest M.2 form factor.

The PCIe x8 slot

The PCIe x8 slot is the correct choice because, despite being physically longer than the x4 card's edge connector, PCIe slots are designed to be backward-compatible down to lower lane counts. The card's x4 connector will seat fully in the x8 slot, and the slot's electrical wiring will automatically negotiate to run the card at its native x4 speed. This provides a secure, functional connection without occupying the x16 slot used by the graphics card. Notably, PCIe slots use a universal point-to-point interface, so a smaller-lane card can always work in a larger-lane slot.

One of the RAM modules is faulty

A defective RAM module can fail to respond to the memory controller's initial handshake, so the BIOS never registers its presence. Since the technician has already reseated it and tried it in different slots, the unchanged 8GB total strongly indicates that the module itself is faulty, not the slot or installation. This is a classic symptom of failed memory chips or corrupted SPD data.

Check the BIOS settings to ensure the SATA port is enabled.

SATA ports are disabled by default on some motherboards or become disabled after a CMOS reset; when disabled, the firmware will not probe that port during POST, so the drive is invisible even though it has power. Checking the UEFI/BIOS setup is the correct next step after confirming the cable and power connections, as you can both see whether the port is active and verify the SATA mode (e.g., AHCI). This setting is the gatekeeper for all later OS-level detection.

The front panel header wiring

Correct. Improperly connected power switch wires are a common cause of no power-on with a working PSU. Verify the PWR_SW cable is correctly seated on the correct pins.

Software as a Service (SaaS)

SaaS delivers a complete, ready-to-use application. For email, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace are examples. The provider handles all backend management, including OS patches, making it ideal for this requirement.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the correct choice because it supplies on-demand virtualized hardware—computing power, memory, storage, and networking—allowing you to provision virtual machines and install the exact operating system, middleware, runtime, and application stack your custom web application requires. This gives you full administrative control over the guest OS, file system, and configuration, which is essential when migrating an existing application that may depend on specific system libraries, kernel parameters, or legacy services. The cloud provider only maintains the underlying physical infrastructure, while you handle everything from the OS upward, ensuring compatibility and flexibility.

IaaS

IaaS provides virtualized computing infrastructure over the internet, including virtual machines, storage, and networking. The provider manages the physical hardware and hypervisor, while the customer retains full administrative control over the operating system, middleware, and database software. This matches the requirement for a critical database server where the company needs to manage and tune the database, apply OS-level security patches, and install custom drivers without being responsible for racking servers or maintaining data-center power and cooling.

Elasticity

Elasticity is the defining cloud characteristic that lets a private cloud automatically and in near real-time add virtual machines, containers, or other compute/storage resources when workload spikes (e.g., a flash sale) and release them when demand drops. This dynamic, horizontal or vertical scaling matches resource allocation to actual traffic levels, preventing both over-provisioning and under-provisioning. It directly addresses the e-commerce platform's fluctuating traffic pattern, making it the correct answer.

The total physical RAM installed in the host

At 90% memory utilization, the hypervisor has almost no free physical RAM to allocate to new virtual machines. When overcommit is enabled, the hypervisor must rely on swapping guest pages to disk, which introduces severe latency and degrades performance across all VMs. Additionally, the hypervisor itself needs headroom for management operations and I/O buffering; exhaustion of physical RAM is a hard capacity limit, unlike CPU or NIC resources which are shared and can be oversubscribed without immediate failure. Thus, expanding physical RAM is the direct remedy for this memory-bound host.

Use a separate SSD for each VM to distribute I/O load.

The root cause of the disk bottleneck is that all VMs share a single virtual disk on one SSD, creating a single I/O queue and contention. By provisioning a separate physical SSD for each VM, you distribute the I/O workload across independent storage subsystems, each with its own controller, cache, and queue depth. This reduces latency and prevents one VM's bursty I/O from starving the others, directly addressing the storage bottleneck rather than masking it with unrelated resources.

The motherboard has failed

Given that the PSU is good and the power button sends the correct signal, the motherboard is the remaining component that controls the power-on sequence. A damaged motherboard (e.g., from a power surge) will not start the system.

The printer's print queue is paused or the printer is in an 'Offline' state on the print server

A paused print queue on the print server is the classic cause of jobs spooling successfully but never reaching an online, responsive printer. The printer's static IP and physical link are fully functional (as evidenced by a successful ping), yet the print server's spooler holds all documents in a 'paused' or 'Offline' state and does not forward them to the network port. This can be due to a manually paused queue, the printer driver setting 'Use Printer Offline', or the print server losing its connection to the printer port. Clearing the pause or resetting the printer status on the server immediately allows queued jobs to flush.

The cable is damaged from bending

The flat network cable has thinner copper conductors and less protective insulation than round cables. When the desktop was moved, the cable was likely bent sharply or pinched against the new desk, causing the internal wires to fracture. A broken conductor interrupts the physical link, which is exactly why the NIC and wall jack link lights are both off—there is no active electrical circuit. Even if the outer jacket appears intact, bent cable pairs can be severed internally, making this the most probable failure point.

The drum was not reset after installation

The imaging drum life counter is stored in non-volatile memory and is only cleared by an explicit reset procedure after installing a new drum. If the technician simply replaces the drum without navigating the printer's 'Reset Drum' menu or running the manufacturer's reset tool, the printer continues to interpret the OLD drum's expired page count. Therefore, the 'Replace Imaging Drum' message reappears immediately even though the hardware is new. This is the classic failure mode.

Verify that the DNS server address is configured correctly on the workstation.

Correct. Since the user can ping the DNS server IP but not resolve hostnames, the DNS client configuration or the DNS server itself is the problem. Checking the DNS settings is the appropriate first step.

The USB port not providing enough power

Insufficient power from the USB port can cause the adapter to overheat and reset, leading to intermittent connectivity. This is common when a high-power USB device is connected to a low-power port or a port with degraded voltage.