220-1102 Operating Systems Practice Question
A technician needs to deploy Windows 10 Pro to a new laptop that does not have an optical drive. The technician has a Windows 10 ISO file. Which tool should the technician use to create a bootable USB installation drive?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse DiskPart as a complete solution for creating bootable media because they know it can partition and format drives, but they overlook the need for a dedicated tool to properly extract the ISO and configure the boot sector for installation.
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
✓
Windows Media Creation Tool
The Windows Media Creation Tool is the correct choice because it is specifically designed to download a Windows 10 ISO and create a bootable USB installation drive directly from that ISO. It handles the necessary partition formatting, file extraction, and boot sector configuration (using FAT32 and UEFI-compatible structures) automatically, making it the simplest and most reliable method for deploying Windows 10 to a laptop without an optical drive.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Windows To Go
Why it's wrong here
Windows To Go is a deprecated feature that creates a portable, full Windows environment on a USB stick, intended to be booted and run on a host machine. It does not generate a Windows installation media, as it provisions a working OS rather than a setup environment. Booting from a Windows To Go drive launches that portable Windows session; it cannot be used to deploy Windows 10 Pro onto a new laptop's internal storage.
- ✗
DiskPart
Why it's wrong here
DiskPart is a command-line disk partitioning tool that can clean, create partitions, and format a USB drive as FAT32 or NTFS. However, it does not automatically write a boot sector or copy the Windows installation files needed for bootable media. Even after using DiskPart to prepare the drive, you would still need to manually copy installation sources and configure boot files with additional utilities like bcdboot, making it an incomplete solution by itself.
- ✓
Windows Media Creation Tool
Why this is correct
The Windows Media Creation Tool is Microsoft's official utility designed specifically for creating bootable installation media for Windows 10. It walks you through choosing the edition, language, and architecture, then automatically downloads the appropriate ISO and writes both the boot files and installation payload to the USB drive. The tool handles the necessary partition scheme, file system formatting, and boot sector installation, ensuring the resulting USB is recognized and bootable on target hardware.
- ✗
File Explorer
Why it's wrong here
Copying the contents of a Windows ISO to a USB drive using File Explorer only places files onto the drive as ordinary data; no boot sector or boot manager is installed, and the drive retains a standard removable format like exFAT or NTFS without active boot flags. A bootable Windows installer requires a properly structured partition (often FAT32 for UEFI or an active primary partition for BIOS) along with a written boot code and EFI boot entries. File Explorer provides no mechanism for these low-level operations, so the drive will not be bootable and cannot install Windows 10 Pro.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Linux File System Structure
Key term
32-bit File Allocation Table
32-bit File Allocation Table (FAT32) is a file system that organizes data on storage devices like hard drives and USB flash drives using a 32-bit addressing scheme to track where files are stored.
Key term
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
UEFI is the modern replacement for BIOS that controls how a computer starts up and loads the operating system.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every 220-1102 question from scratch — 925 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or 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.