220-1102 Software Troubleshooting Practice Question
A user reports that Microsoft Word crashes whenever they try to open a specific document. Other documents work fine. The technician determines the document is located on a network share. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of the crashes?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to assume network-related issues (like full shares or permissions) are the cause because the file is on a network share, but the key clue is that only one document is affected, pointing to file corruption rather than connectivity or share-level problems.
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
✓
The document is corrupted.
The symptom—Microsoft Word crashing only when opening a specific document while other documents work fine—strongly indicates file-level corruption. A corrupted document can cause the application to fail during parsing or rendering, as Word attempts to interpret malformed data structures within the file. Since the issue is isolated to one file and not the application or network, corruption is the most direct cause.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The network share is full.
Why it's wrong here
A full network share prevents creating or saving files because the volume is out of space, but opening a document is primarily a read operation. Word may need to write a temporary lock file, yet a failed lock-file write due to insufficient disk space generates an explicit "disk full" error dialog, not a process crash. The application also handles this condition by falling back to read-only mode, so it cannot explain why Word would terminate unexpectedly when opening a single specific file.
- ✗
The user does not have write permissions to the share.
Why it's wrong here
Write-permission failures cause an access-denied error when Word attempts to create its owner/lock file or later tries to save changes. The operating system returns a security failure that the application catches and surfaces as a dialog box such as "Document is locked for editing" or "Access denied," and it may even continue by opening the document read-only. A permissions problem would affect every file in that share, not just one document, and it never causes invalid memory access—so it is not a crash vector.
- ✓
The document is corrupted.
Why this is correct
A corrupted document has a damaged internal structure—for example, a malformed OLE compound document header in .doc files, or broken XML parts, missing relationships, or an invalid central directory in .docx ZIP-based packages. When Word's parser hits such defects, it may read out-of-bounds memory, trip an unhandled exception, or enter a corrupted state that the application cannot recover from, leading to a hard crash. This is consistent with the crash occurring only when one specific file is opened, while all other documents load normally.
- ✗
The network cable is unplugged.
Why it's wrong here
If the network cable is unplugged, the entire network interface is offline, so the user would lose access to every share on that server, not just one document. Word would either fail to enumerate the directory, display a "network path not found" error, or hang while waiting for the connection to time out—none of which cause an application process to terminate with a crash. Because the problem is isolated to a single document, a physical-layer connectivity failure that disrupts all traffic is ruled out.
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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.