Computer Operating System Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Correct answer: CP/M

When the IBM PC appeared in 1981 the dominant operating system for microcomputers was Digital Research’s CP/M, which ran on the 8-bit 8080 and Z80 machines that made up most of the market. PC-DOS shipped with the new machine and displaced it over the following years.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Partitions the hard drive for use

FDISK creates, deletes and displays the partitions of a hard disk and marks one active for booting. It divides the drive; each partition must then be formatted separately before it can hold files.

Answer: C

Correct answer: consists of a full or partial list of the token's as they appear in the program. Created by Lexical analysis and used for syntax analysis and interpretation

The uniform symbol table is the token stream: as the lexical phase recognises each element of the source it appends a uniform-length entry describing it, and the syntax phase then parses that list rather than the raw characters. It is built afresh for every program.

Answer: D

Correct answer: All of the above

The operating system manages every resource of the machine: memory, deciding where each program sits and protecting one from another; the processor, scheduling which process runs; and the disks and other devices, driving them and arbitrating between the programs that want them.

Answer: D

Correct answer: F8

Pressing F8 as DOS starts steps through CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT one line at a time, asking whether to execute each - which is how a troublesome driver is identified. F5 skips both files entirely.

Answer: C

Correct answer: DELTREE

DELTREE removes a directory together with everything inside it - files, subdirectories and their contents - in a single command. RD refuses unless the directory is already empty, so without DELTREE the tree must be emptied from the bottom up.

Answer: B

Correct answer: is less secure than end-to-end encryption

Link encryption protects each hop separately, so the message is decrypted and re-encrypted at every intermediate node - and lies in clear inside each of them. End-to-end encryption keeps it encrypted the whole way, so the intermediate nodes never see the plaintext at all.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Upward compatibility

Upward compatibility means a later version still runs what was written for the earlier ones, so users can move to the new system without abandoning their existing programs. It constrains the designers, but without it few would upgrade.

Answer: C

Correct answer: MODE MONO

MODE MONO switches output to the monochrome adapter. The related settings are CO40 and CO80 for colour and BW40 and BW80 for a colour adapter driving a monochrome display.

Answer: B

Correct answer: a system software

A translator - a compiler, assembler or interpreter - serves the machine and the programming process rather than an end user’s task, which is what makes it system software. Application software is what the user runs to do the job they actually came for.