220-1201 Deploying 20 identical office PCs Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Secure Boot is enabled on the clones

  Why it's wrong here

  Secure Boot is a UEFI firmware feature designed to prevent unauthorized operating systems and bootloaders from loading by validating their digital signatures. If Secure Boot were the root cause, the system would typically display an error indicating a security violation or an invalid signature, rather than a generic 'Boot Device Not Found' message. The latter error suggests the system cannot even locate a valid bootable partition, which precedes any Secure Boot validation checks.

• ✗

  The SATA mode is set to AHCI on the clones

  Why it's wrong here

  AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) is the standard and recommended SATA mode for modern storage devices, including SSDs and HDDs, enabling advanced features like Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and hot-plugging. Setting the SATA mode to AHCI is generally the correct configuration for optimal performance and compatibility with contemporary operating systems. While a mismatch between the installed OS's drivers and the BIOS SATA mode (e.g., OS installed with AHCI drivers, but BIOS set to IDE) could cause a blue screen or boot failure, 'Boot Device Not Found' specifically indicates the drive itself isn't recognized as bootable, not a driver conflict.

• ✓

  The boot mode is set to Legacy BIOS instead of UEFI

  Why this is correct

  Modern operating systems, especially when installed on GPT-partitioned drives, utilize UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) for booting, relying on an EFI System Partition (ESP). If the original PC image was prepared for UEFI boot, it contains this specific partition structure. When the target PCs are configured for Legacy BIOS mode, their firmware is designed to look for a Master Boot Record (MBR) and cannot recognize or process the UEFI boot partition, leading directly to a 'Boot Device Not Found' error because the expected boot signature is absent.

• ✗

  The CMOS battery is dead on the clones

  Why it's wrong here

  A dead CMOS battery causes the system's BIOS/UEFI settings to revert to their factory defaults whenever power is removed, as it can no longer maintain the volatile memory. While this could alter boot order or other configurations, the default boot mode on most modern motherboards is typically UEFI. Therefore, a dead CMOS battery would more likely reset the system *to* UEFI mode, which would resolve the issue if the cloned image was UEFI-based, rather than causing a 'Boot Device Not Found' error by defaulting to Legacy.

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