220-1102 Operating Systems Practice Question
A technician is investigating a Windows 10 computer that has experienced several application crashes and one system crash. The technician wants to see a graphical timeline of these events and the system's stability over time. Which tool should the technician use?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates choose Event Viewer because it is the most familiar log viewer, but they overlook that Reliability Monitor is specifically designed for graphical timeline and stability assessment, not just raw event inspection.
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 graphical timeline of system and application crashes, along with a stability index over time. Unlike Event Viewer, which shows raw logs, Reliability Monitor aggregates critical events into an easy-to-read chart, making it ideal for quickly assessing a system's stability history.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Event Viewer
Why it's wrong here
Event Viewer is an administrative console that aggregates raw logs from the application, security, setup, system, and forwarded events. While you can filter for error or critical events around a crash time, it does not present a consolidated graphical timeline or a computed stability index. Reliability Monitor actually consumes these same log entries but surfaces them as a visual day-by-day chart, making it better for spotting crash patterns at a glance.
- ✓
Reliability Monitor
Why this is correct
Reliability Monitor is a built-in MMC snap-in launched via "perfmon /rel" that displays a stability index from 1 to 10 across a day-by-day graph. It correlates software installations, failures, warnings, and crashes on a unified timeline, allowing you to quickly identify whether repeated crashes are clustered around a specific event, such as a driver update. This visual chronology is exactly what is needed when investigating a Windows 10 system that has experienced several crashes.
- ✗
Task Manager
Why it's wrong here
Task Manager provides real-time snapshots of running applications, processes, CPU/memory/disk/network utilization, and startup entries, but it has no historical logging capability. It only shows the current state of the system at the moment it is opened; it cannot reveal past crashes, event patterns, or any stability trend. It is suitable for killing an unresponsive process now, not for analyzing a pattern of recurring failures.
- ✗
System Configuration (msconfig)
Why it's wrong here
System Configuration (msconfig) is a boot troubleshooting tool used to modify startup services, boot options, and diagnostic settings such as Safe Boot or boot logging. It does not store, display, or analyze crash event data or reliability history; its function is purely to configure how the system boots, not to inspect why it has been crashing. Thus, it offers no insight into a history of multiple failures on a Windows 10 machine.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Windows Performance Monitor
Key term
Windows
Windows is a family of operating systems developed by Microsoft that manages computer hardware and software, providing a graphical user interface for users to interact with their devices.
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.
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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.