220-1102 Operating Systems Practice Question
A technician is supporting a shared training-room workstation. The immediate goal is to identify Linux processes consuming CPU interactively. Which tool, control, or procedure is the best fit?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse Windows administrative tools (like Event Viewer or System Restore) with Linux utilities, or assume that user management tools can monitor system performance, when the question specifically requires an interactive Linux CPU monitoring tool.
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
✓
top
The `top` command is the standard Linux utility for real-time monitoring of system processes, displaying CPU and memory usage interactively. It refreshes dynamically and allows sorting by CPU consumption, making it the best fit for identifying processes that are consuming CPU resources on a shared training-room workstation.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Local Users and Groups
Why it's wrong here
Local Users and Groups is an administrative console (lusrmgr.msc) used to manage user accounts, group memberships, and access permissions on a Windows system. It does not expose process-level information such as CPU or memory utilization, and it cannot show which process is actively consuming system resources. Even if the technician suspected that a specific user's session was causing a problem, this tool would only allow credential or permission adjustments, not allow identification of the offending process. Therefore, it is entirely unrelated to the stated goal of live CPU process monitoring.
- ✓
top
Why this is correct
The `top` utility provides a real-time, dynamically updating view of system processes, sorted by default by CPU usage. This satisfies the stem’s constraint of interactive identification, as the technician can immediately observe which processes are consuming CPU without scripting or logging. Unlike static tools such as `ps`, `top` refreshes continuously, enabling live diagnosis of transient spikes in a shared training-room environment.
- ✗
Event Viewer
Why it's wrong here
Event Viewer is a built-in Windows tool that displays logs for applications, security, system, and other components, providing a historical record of errors, warnings, and informational events. While it can be helpful for reviewing past crashes or logged events, it does not offer a continuously refreshing, real-time view of running processes or their CPU consumption. Event log entries are typically written asynchronously and do not include a live ranking of process usage, so a technician could not use Event Viewer to instantly spot which process is currently saturating the CPU. For this scenario, a dynamic process viewer like `top` is far more tactical and immediate.
- ✗
System Restore
Why it's wrong here
System Restore is a Windows recovery feature that reverts system files, registry settings, and certain installed programs to a previous restore point. It is designed for undoing harmful changes or recovering from boot failures, not for real-time process inspection or identifying CPU usage. Because the immediate goal is to interactively discover which process is consuming CPU resources, System Restore offers no live monitoring data and could even disrupt the training room's existing state if applied. Thus, while it has a place in troubleshooting, it is not the correct diagnostic tool for this scenario.
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