220-1102 Software Troubleshooting Practice Question
A technician is troubleshooting a Windows 10 workstation that displays a blue screen error 'SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION' when launching a graphics-intensive application. The video driver and Windows updates are current, and memory diagnostics show no errors. Which built-in Windows tool should the technician use to view recent system crashes and identify the error code associated with the driver?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse Reliability Monitor with Event Viewer, but the exam specifically tests Reliability Monitor as the built-in tool for a quick, graphical overview of crash history and driver error codes without needing to filter through hundreds of event logs.
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 is the correct tool because it provides a history of system crashes, including blue screen errors like SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION, along with the associated error codes and driver details. Unlike Event Viewer, it offers a user-friendly timeline view that directly correlates crashes with software or driver events, making it ideal for identifying problematic drivers in graphics-intensive scenarios.
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 troubleshooting tool for viewing running applications, background processes, services, and live performance metrics such as CPU, memory, disk, and network utilization. It allows you to end unresponsive tasks or change process priorities, but it does not maintain a persistent log of historical crash events or blue screen stop codes.
- ✗
Resource Monitor
Why it's wrong here
Resource Monitor provides a deep, real-time view of current system activity, drilling down into per-process CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network throughput, including associated handles and modules. Because it only samples instantaneous or very recent data, it cannot show prior blue screen errors or store failure information needed to diagnose a stop error.
- ✓
Reliability Monitor
Why this is correct
Reliability Monitor, reached through Action Center, maintains a rolling timeline of system stability and records meaningful events such as Windows updates, application installs, application failures, and Windows stop errors (blue screens). When you select a blue screen event, it displays the bugcheck error code and often identifies the faulty driver or module, making it specifically useful for tying a crash to a recent change.
- ✗
Performance Monitor
Why it's wrong here
Performance Monitor is an MMC snap-in used to collect and analyze performance counters over time through Data Collector Sets and user-defined logs. It focuses on metrics like processor time, memory pages/sec, disk queue length, and network throughput, and it has no capability to display stop error codes or crash details from past Windows failures.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
User Privacy Considerations
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
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a personal computer operating system developed by Microsoft that combines the familiarity of Windows 7 with the modern features of Windows 8, designed to run on a wide range of devices from desktops to tablets.
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.