The document contains questions and answers related to computer hardware components and concepts. It discusses topics like what SMART is, the difference between RAM and ROM, primary and secondary storage devices, BIOS, boot process, hard drive errors, partitioning, and troubleshooting boot issues.

1. INTERVIEW
QUESTION
WELCOME TO PC
HARDWARE

2. WHAT IS SMART ?
• SMART stands for self monitoring analysis and reporting
technology.
• When SMART feature of your hard disk is enabled in the
BIOS, the hard disk continuously monitors itself and
attempts self –repair.

3. WHY DOES MICROPROCESSOR
CONTAIN ROM CHIPS?
• Microprocessor contain ROM chip because it contain
instructions to execute data.
• it contain the monitor program which not only include
execution instruction but also interfacing program

4. EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
RAM AND ROM?
• RAM: Read / Write memory, High Speed, Volatile
Memory. ROM: Read only memory, Low Speed, Non
Voliate Memory.
• RAM- Random Access memory it is a Volatile Memory
• volatile mean= when power is off data is loss ok
• ROM- read only memory it is a non-volatile memory
• it is read only memory we don't write this memory only
read

5. EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN PRIMARY AND
SECONDARY STORAGE DEVICE?
• In primary storage device the storage capacity is
limited. It has a volatile memory. In secondary
storage device the storage capacity is larger. It is a
nonvolatile memory. Primary devices are: RAM /
ROM. Secondary devices are: Floppy disc / Hard
disk.
• Primary storage device is Ram where the
instructions are stored for temporary and secondary
storage is hard disk floppy cds etc.

6. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF
BIOS?
• in pc's the most common are the AWARD,AMI, AND
phoenix

7. WHAT IS POST IN TERMS OF BIOS?
• For the person who still has no idea about the BIOS on
your PC, notice when you first turn on your PC or laptop
a few screens pop up. It might be a logo such as DELL
or HP or ASUS, Tyan , AMI BIOS, AWARD BIOS etc. You
might also see a memory count . This is all part of the
POST (Power On Self Test). POST is a test the BIOS
runs before it hands over control to the OS (Operating
System). You can see more of the post if you disable the
logo option in your BIOS. Otherwise just know that if you
see a logo the POST is running.

8. HOW TO UPDATE BIOS CHIP?
• There are two methods to update yiour BIOS chip:
• 1. Flash it (software method)
• 2. Program it with an EEPROM programmer. This is a
hardware method . This is how we at BIOSMAN program
sall our BIOS chips.

9. HOW DO CMOS AND ACPI RELATE TO
BIOS?
• Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) refers to
a chip inside your computer that saves your BIOS settings. As
a result, the terms CMOS and BIOS are sometimes used
interchangeably.
• Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is an
industry standard that defines power management features
and other configuration information for computers. Some
previous versions of BIOS do not support ACPI, and so the
computer may not successfully enter advanced power modes
such as sleep or hibernate. For more information, check the
information that came with your computer or go to the
computer manufacturer's website.

10. WHAT IS BOOT MANAGER?
• An EFI boot manager is also used to select and load the
operating system, removing the need for a dedicated
boot loader mechanism (the OS boot loader is an EFI
application).

11. EXPLAIN IF YOU ARE GETTING IN
DISC BOOT ERROR. AT INITIAL STAGE
WHAT YOU NEED 2 CHECK. PLEASE
DETAIL IN STEPS?
• 1.Enter into the BIOS and check whether your hard
disk drive is set as first boot device,if not then set it
as first boot device in the boot device priority.
• 2.If the problems exists,then you have to boot the
system with a new operating system cd and install a
new one.
• 3.Side by side check the RAM also for the
connection

12. WHAT IS MBR LOCATED ON THE DISK?
• Main Boot Record is located in sector 0, track 0, head 0,
cylinder 0 of the primary active partition.
• sector 0, head 0, cylinder 0,

13. EXPLAIN HOW MANY LOGICAL
DRIVES IS IT POSSIBLE TO FIT
ONTO A PHYSICAL DISK?
• Maximum of 24 logical drives. The extended
partition can only have 23 logical drives.
• Max of 24 partition from "c" to "z"
• primary 4

14. WHAT IS ACTIVE WINDOW?
• The current window that is being used

15. WHAT IS ASYNCHRONOUS SRAM?
• Async SRAM is not synchronized with the system clock,
so the CPU must wait for requested data from the L2
cache.

16. WHAT IS BIOS (BASIC INPUT AND
OUTPUT SOFTWARE)?
• BIOS stands for Basic Input and Output Software. The BIOS
is software that controls the most fundamental operations of a
computer and a BIOS is necessary in order to start a
computer. Without a BIOS, a computer would not know how to
communicate with its hard disk and other devices. The BIOS
is stored on a ROM (Read-Only Memory) computer chip
inside the computer. Many computers in the past few years
use "Flash EPROM" chips, which means the BIOS chip can
be reprogrammed with an updated BIOS. A BIOS may need to
be updated to fix bugs, such as the year 2000 bug, or an
update may be necessary in order to support new hardware
protocols.

17. WHAT IS BIT?
• Bit is short for binary digit. A bit can be a zero or a one.

18. WHAT IS BINARY?
• Binary is an alternative number system which works very well
for computers. Humans have ten fingers; that's probably why
we use ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) in our number
system (decimal), but it is easier for a computer to use only two
digits (0 and 1). Ones and zeros can be represented with high
or low voltage, closed or open switches, aligned or misaligned
magnetic particles, etc. A byte is a group of eight bits, and it is
the standard unit by which data is stored. There are 256
different combinations of zeros and ones you can make with
one byte, from 00000000 to 11111111. This is enough to cover
all the ASCII characters. If more than 256 values are needed,
then more than one byte can be used. With two bytes, there
are 65536 possible combinations of ones and zeros. These
bytes can represent any kind of data. For example, a picture
may be made up of thousands of pairs of bytes, with each pair
of bytes representing a single dot in one of 65536 colors. Put
together all these dots (known as pixels) and you have a full-
color picture (most picture data is also compressed). On
systems using Microsoft Windows, the meaning of data stored
on a disk is determined by the file's extension. For example: if
it is TXT, then it is ASCII text; if it is EXE, then it is a program
(an executable).

19. WHAT IS BYTE?
• A byte is eight binary digits. It is the smallest unit a
computer works with at once. The bits of a byte can be
individually modified, but a computer still works with at
least one byte at a time. See also: Binary and my article
on Bits and Bytes.

20. WHAT IS CD-R?
• Compact Disc Recordable. A special type of compact
disc which can have information written onto it once. You
must have a special CD-R drive to write to these discs,
but most CD-ROM drives can read them.

21. WHAT IS CD-ROM?
• Compact Disc - Read Only Memory. A CD-ROM is any
compact disc which contains computer data. These discs
can store huge amounts of data (up to 640 megabytes).
If there is a large amount of data on a CD-ROM, then it
is usually impractical to copy the data on to the hard
disk; in this case, you must insert the disc whenever you
want to use the data. The ROM simply means that you
can not save information onto these discs. CD-ROM may
also refer to the drive used to read these discs.

22. WHAT IS DRAG AND DROP?
• When you click your mouse once and an object and hold
it, while simultaneously moving that item to a different
location.

23. WHAT IS THE INTERFACE?
• The visible layer which allows a user to communicate
with a computer.

24. WHAT IS RESTORE?
• Restore means to make a window smaller than full
screen, so that it can be resized.

25. EXPLAIN HOW TO CLEAR COMPUTER
MOTHERBOARD CMOS PASSWORD?
• To clear Computer Motherboard CMOS password we will
do these steps. Since CMOS is a special chip with its
own battery, the best way to clear out a CMOS chip is to
disconnect it from its power supply.

26. EXPLAIN WHAT ARE MOTHERBOARD
COMPONENTS?
• It contains the following key components:
• 1.A microprocessor "socket" which defines what kind of central processing unit the
motherboard uses.
• 2.A chipset which forms the computer's logic system. It is usually composed of two parts
called bridges (a "north" bridge and its opposite, "south" bridge), which connects the CPU
to the rest of the system;
• 3.A Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) chip which controls the most basic function of a
computer, and how to repair it; and
• 4.A real-time clock which is a battery-operated chip which maintains the system's time, and
other basic functions.
• The motherboard also has slots or ports for the attachment of various peripherals or
support system/hardware. There is an Accelerated Graphics Port, which is used exclusively
for video cards; Integrated Drive Electronics, which provides the interfaces for the hard disk
drives; Memory or RAM cards; and Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), which
provides electronic connections for video capture cards and network cards, among others.
• motherboard components are hdd,memory,processor,graphic card,net card,BIOS chip.

27. WHAT IS ACCELERATOR KEY?
• A keyboard shortcut for a command. For example, Ctrl +
Alt + Delete is an accelerator key for the task manager in
Windows 95

28. WHY WE KNOW THAT THIS
MOTHERBOARD IS CORRECT
ON THIS CONDITION THAT
COMPUTER IS NO DISPLAY?
• if ram is not working then we can change it and
check that display if display not comes then we can
say that it has problem with motherboard
• first check in smps he will work right then check
ram, ram is out in side slot then ruff the earesar ram
is work in ok then check is cmos battery then last
check is power cable and vga cable he will work ok
then replace the motherboard.

29. WHAT IS CACHE MEMORY ON
MOTHERBOARD?
• Cache memory is a small high-speed memory. It is used
for temporary storage of data & information between the
main memory and the CPU (center processing unit). The
cache memory is only in RAM.

30. WHAT IS CLOCK SPEED?
• It is also called clock rate, the speed at which a microprocessor executes
instructions. Every computer contains an internal clock that regulates the rate at
which instructions are executed and synchronizes all the various computer
components. The CPU requires a fixed number of clock ticks (or clock cycles) to
execute each instruction. The faster the clock, the more instructions the CPU can
execute per second.
• Clock speeds are expressed in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz).
• The internal architecture of a CPU has as much to do with a CPU?s performance as
the clock speed, so two CPUs with the same clock speed will not necessarily
perform equally. Whereas an Intel 80286 microprocessor requires 20 cycles to
multiply two numbers, an Intel 80486 or later processor can perform the same
calculation in a single clock tick. (Note that clock tick here refers to the system?s
clock, which runs at 66 MHz for all PCs.) These newer processors, therefore, would
be 20 times faster than the older processors even if their clock speeds were the
same. In addition, some microprocessors are superscalar, which means that they
can execute more than one instruction per clock cycle.
• Like CPUs, expansion buses also have clock speeds. Ideally, the CPU clock speed
and the bus clock speed should be the same so that neither component slows down
the other. In practice, the bus clock speed is often slower than the CPU clock
speed, which creates a bottleneck. This is why new local buses, such as AGP, have
been developed.

31. WHAT IS CACHE MEMORY?
• Cache memory is a small high-speed memory. It is used
for temporary storage of data & information between the
main memory and the CPU (center processing unit). The
cache memory is only in RAM.
• Cache memory is random access memory (RAM) that a
computer microprocessor can access more quickly than
it can access regular RAM. As the microprocessor
processes data, it looks first in the cache memory and if
it finds the data there.

32. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STATIC AND
DYNAMIC RAM?
• Static RAM: No refreshing, 6 to 8 MOS transistors are
required to form one memory cell, Information stored as
voltage level in a flip flop. Dynamic RAM: Refreshed
periodically, 3 to 4 transistors are required to form one
memory cell, Information is stored as a charge in the
gate to substrate capacitance.

33. EXPLAIN THE VIRTUAL MEMORY?
• In computing, virtual memory is a memory management
technique developed for multitasking kernels. This
technique virtualizes a computer architecture's various
forms of computer data storage such as random-access
memory and disk storage, allowing a program to be
designed as though there is only one kind of memory,
"virtual" memory, which behaves like directly and
contiguous addressable read/write memory.

34. WHY DO WE CALL MOTHERBOARD A
MOTHERBOARD?
• Motherboard is known as motherboard because in the
world all borned creature is directly attached to her
mother & after it all the relations creats due to her
mother so in the same manner all the i/o devices
(hardware devices) directly attached to the motherboard
& all devices know the motherboard first of all in our
Computer system & after it any hardware device can
communicate to other hardware device.

35. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
THE PHYSICAL DRIVE AND THE
LOGICAL DRIVE. HOW DO WE
IDENTIFY? HOW DO TO CONFIGURE
THE LOGICAL DRIVE?
• A physical drive is drive tha you can physically see
in the computer system itself. That is the gadget
itself. Logic drive is inside the physical drive and this
is the portion of the drive that stores data the user is
using. To configure it you must update it on the
BIOS.

36. IF THE SYSTEM IS NOT BOOTING WHAT
CAN WE DO?
• First we must go to bios and should check boot
sequence,local hdd status
• Or we should check RAM.& check h.d.d cable. cheack
cd writer for cd or dvd