UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2013/2014
ORDINARY EXAMINATION FOR THE DIPLOMA IN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
DIT 304 PRINCIPLES OF COMPUTER SUPPORT &
MAINTENANCE
DATE: AUGUST, 2014 TIME: 1½HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Any Three Questions.
QUESTION ONE
a) Explain how you would go about taking measurements of Direct current (DC) of
a power supply Unit by use of Digital meter. [4Marks]
b) Discuss TWO possible causes of boot failure with their solutions. [4 Marks]
c) Discuss FIVE hard drive preventive maintenance procedures (PM) [5 Marks]
d) Explain the TWO major importance of drive partitioning during operating system
installation. [2 Marks]
e) Describe the boot process of a computer system. [5 Marks]
QUESTION TWO
a) The following are components found within Computer Power supply and
motherboard electronic circuitry. Complete the table below as indicated.[9 Marks]
b) Tommy realized after powering his desktop running windows xp that there was a
string of text indicating NTLDR file missing. After copying the file back from
bootable Win xp CD, he encountered a blue screen indicating corrupt operating
system.
i. Discuss TWO possible faults with the system. [4 Marks]
ii. Give the possible Solutions and process to overcome the faults mentioned
above. [6 Marks]
iii. What are HOT SWAPPABLE Devices? [1 Marks]
QUESTION THREE
a) Describe how you would mount and configure Four Hard disk drives on one
system Unit with IDE/SATA channel at the Bios Set-up level [6 Marks]
b) Explain any TWO common keyboard errors and indicate the possible solution for
the same. [4 Marks]
c) Discuss FOUR factors one would consider before purchasing a server for network
operations. [6 Marks]
d) Give the meaning of the following acronyms. [4 Marks]
CHKDSK /P.
FIXBOOT
3
DXDIAG.
IPCONFIG /ALL
QUESTION FOUR
a) Explain two possible printer faults and their remedies [4 Marks]
b) Discuss the outcome of the RUN commands below. [4 Marks]
i. Ping 172.16.2.40
ii. \\172.16.2.40\c$
iii. Net view
iv. Ifconfig
c) From Business continuity plan (BCP) and disaster recovery plan (DRP) point of
view, discuss the skills you have acquired so far in ensuring computer systems
operate optimally. [12 Marks]
QUESTION FIVE
a) Provide the differences between dual booting and warm booting in computing.
[2 Marks]
b) What is the work of a start-up Disk? [2 Marks]
c) Describe how one can make a start up Disk using Windows xp Operating system.
[4 Marks]
d) Meko started his Printer and realized it was NOT being detected by client
computers on the network. Explain the causes of the problem and elaborate on
steps you could undertake to resolve the issue in case the network connectivity
and its devices are functional. [12 Marks]
