220-1102 Software Troubleshooting Practice Question
A user reports that a specific application crashes frequently on their Windows 10 workstation. The technician wants to see a history of application crashes and identify any common faulting modules. Which built-in Windows tool should the technician use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often choose Event Viewer because they know it logs errors, but they overlook that Reliability Monitor provides a more efficient, pre-filtered view of application crash history specifically designed for this troubleshooting scenario.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Reliability Monitor
Reliability Monitor (perfmon /rel) is the correct tool because it provides a history of application crashes, including the faulting module name and version, in a timeline view. This allows the technician to quickly identify recurring failures and common faulting modules without needing to manually filter through Event Viewer logs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Task Manager
Why it's wrong here
Task Manager is a real-time system utility that shows currently running applications, processes, CPU, memory, and disk usage on its Processes and Performance tabs. It does not persist any historical data about application terminations; once a crash kills a process, that process vanishes from the list. Without a log of past crashes, Task Manager cannot help identify a recurring faulting module or the frequency of failures, making it unsuitable for diagnosing a specific application that crashes frequently.
- ✗
Event Viewer
Why it's wrong here
Event Viewer does indeed record application crashes in the Windows Application log, where each error event (source 'Application Error' or 'Windows Error Reporting') contains the faulting module and exception code. However, the log is raw and dense, mixing hundreds of routine informational events with critical errors, so you must manually filter for Event ID 1000/1001 and correlate multiple entries to spot a pattern. While it can provide the needed data, it is not a convenient historical summary, and the question asks for the tool explicitly designed for this scenario.
- ✓
Reliability Monitor
Why this is correct
Reliability Monitor is part of Windows 10's Action Center and provides a graphical, chronological timeline of system stability, marking each application failure, Windows error, and warning with a red X, yellow warning, or blue exclamation. When you click an entry, it displays detailed diagnostic information such as the faulting module, exception code, and a link to the specific event in Event Viewer. This aggregated view makes it the most direct, user-friendly tool for seeing whether the same application crashes frequently and identifying the recurring faulting component.
- ✗
Performance Monitor
Why it's wrong here
Performance Monitor collects and charts performance counters over time, such as processor time, memory page faults, disk queue length, and network throughput. It is designed to measure resource utilization and system performance trends, not to capture or record application crash events or the faulting module associated with an unexpected termination. So although it can show that a system is under stress, it provides no diagnostic data about why a particular application crashes, making it irrelevant to this scenario.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Troubleshoot: Windows Boot Failures
Key term
Event Viewer
Event Viewer is a built-in Windows tool that logs system, security, and application events to help administrators monitor and troubleshoot issues.
Key term
Reliability
Reliability is the measure of a system's ability to consistently perform its intended functions without failure over a specified period of time under stated conditions.
About these practice questions
This 220-1102 question is part of Courseiva's 925-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 220-1102 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 220-1102 exam.