Test for Systems Administrator position.

Please note that some of these questions are fairly advanced and it is not expected that you will
know the answers to everything so dont get discouraged if you cannot answer everything.

1. When setting permissions in NTFS for an individual's network drive, which option(s) of the
following levels do you give a default user? Please highlight the correct answer(s).
Full Control / Modify / Read & Execute / Read / Write

2. What do administrative shared folder names always end with? Please highlight the correct
answer.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

#
$
@
%
~

3. Which of the following utilities provides information in the format given below? Please
highlight the correct answer.

1
2
3
4

PING
NBTSTAT
TRACERT
NETSTAT

4. On a network using DHCP, what is the easiest way to find out your IP address, DNS server,
and DHCP server? Please type answer in red or highlight it.
5. A user has a laptop and can get to the Internet without any problems but cannot get to any
internal resources. What is the first thing you would check? Please type answer in red or
highlight it.
6. Which one of the following is equal to 1 kilobyte (KB)? Please highlight the correct answer.

1
2
3
4
5

512 bytes
1000 bytes
1024 bytes
1028 bytes
2048 bytes

7. What is a FSMO role, and how many are there in an AD network? Please type answer in red or
highlight it.
8. What are the pros/cons of using cache mode in Outlook? Please type answer in red or
highlight it.
9. What is the normal.dot file? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

10. A user installs a third-party application which is not behaving properly. You have a hunch
that it is a registry problem. When drilling down into the registry, what would be the first two
levels you try? Please type answer in red or highlight it.
11. A user has a program that automatically starts every time she boots and wishes it would go
away. Please name the different methods you could use to potentially disable this program.
Please type answer in red or highlight it.

12. Using a firewall, what is one of the most effective ways to protect against spambots sending
out thousands of messages from peoples PCs? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

13. You are trying to RDP into a server but cannot get in. Name the different things that could
be the problem. Please type answer in red or highlight it.

14. What GPOs do you like most or use most frequently? Please type answer in red or highlight
it.

15. What is spanning tree protocol? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

16. What does RAID stand for, and describe the differences between levels 0, 1, and 5. Please
type answer in red or highlight it.

17. What is 1-to-1 NAT and how is it used? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

18. What is the difference between an A Record, C Record, and MX Record? Please type answer
in red or highlight it.
19. What is the local host, or "home" IP address? Please type answer in red or highlight it.
20. Below are several IP addresses. They are a mix between public and private, and A, B and C
class address. Please follow each address with whether it is public or private, and the class.
Please type answer in red or highlight it.
Example: 192.168.0.1 Private Class C
10.43.179.66
194.168.199.42
172.16.100.243
177.55.0.2
10.242.15.111
187.6.1.1
192.168.250.11
12.87.1.1

How many IP addresses are in this network address: 177.199.1.0/24? Please type answer in red
or highlight it.

21. You have an AD network and work at BigCompany.com. You local AD domain is
BigCompany.local. You have a NAT'ed environment, but when people try to go to
www.BigCompany.com or any other resource that ends with BigCompany.com, they can't
connect. why? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

22. What are the pros/cons of using a .local or .lan domain (vs the public domain) in an AD
network? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

23. When cloning a disk for a PC refresh, what are some of the considerations you need to take
into effect? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

24. What are your opinions of locking down desktops, versus leaving them open?
answer in red or highlight it.

Please type

25. What are your favorite web sites for technical reference and troubleshooting? Please type
answer in red or highlight it.

26. What is the difference between a GSM and GPRS signal? Please type answer in red or
highlight it.

27. Someone says their Blackberry isn't receiving or sending e-mail, yet they get a GPRS signal.
What are some of the steps you can take to fix this? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

28. What is the difference between BES and BIS? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

29. In Exchange, what is an off-line defrag, what does it do, and when would you use it? Please
type answer in red or highlight it.

30. You are administering Exchange, and the president of your company wants to forward a copy
of all incoming e-mail to a Gmail account. What are the steps you take? Please type answer in
red or highlight it.

31. Someone is claiming that messages sent to them do not arrive in their inbox. You suspect
that this is not entirely true. What do you do in Exchange to trace the path of a message?
Please type answer in red or highlight it.

32. What is an EDB? Please type answer in red or highlight it.

33. What are the pros/cons to allowing PST files? Please type answer in red or highlight it.