Top 50 Computer Basics Interview Questions You Must Prepare 19.Mar.2024

Swiftly pressing and releasing a mouse button.

Move your mouse pointer over the object, then press the left mouse button twice in a row quickly. Be VERY careful to not move the mouse as you double-click. If you move the mouse while trying to double-click, you may end up dragging the object instead of double-clicking it.

Example: You double-click while you open a folder.

It is better if you go to the BIOS first and copy the settings and have them before you try to replace the battery, in case your system does not use the default settings. Once this is done then you can safely replace the battery and if necessary duplicate the BIOS settings you had before.

A system utility that comes with Windows that allows the use to change a variety if different Windows and system settings.

Start -> Control Panel

The representation of the mouse on-screen. Depending on your settings, the cursor can be many different things.

You can change the cursor view from:

Start -> Control Panel -> Mouse -> Pointers tab -> In customize menu you can select different cursor view -> Click on 'Apply' and 'OK'.

A folder can be thought of as a location on your hard disk or floppy disk. Folders used to be called directories/subdirectories. A folder contains files and can contain nested folders (subfolders). Folders and subfolders are used to organize your hard disk.

For example, you probably already have a folder named "My Documents" on your hard disk; you could place a subfolder named "Work" under "My Documents", and place all your work documents within this subfolder. This way, you can keep your work documents separate from your personal documents.

A button does some command in a program when it is clicked. Buttons usually have a 3-dimensional look, although you may have to move the mouse over the button for it to look 3D. You should single-click on buttons (do not double-click).

In Windows Explorer, selecting auto arrange will lock any visible icons into a grid or pattern. Whenever you'll paste or make new folder/file on that folder view will be auto arrange. You need not to make it arrange explicitly.

You can do it: Right click on window -> Arrange Icons by/View -> Auto Arrange.

The reason for the Celerons existence owes to the advent of an AMD processor called the K@AMD brought out a low priced alternative to the Pentium, and Intel, instead of drastically reducing their pricing on their "meat and potatoes" processor to meet that of the lower priced K6 (and eventually, the Athlon), introduced a "crippled" version of the Pentium, and called it the Celeron. (In response, AMD came back with an even lower priced processor of appalling performance called Duron, but that is another story)

Processors are commonly classified by their "Core" speed -- ergo, a 933 MHz Pentium III processor has a core speed of 933 MHz. There are however other significant features that are "classifiable" within a processor -- namely "bus" or "memory access" speed, and onboard "Cache" size (and speed). The Bus speed is the speed at which the processor fetches data from memory, and places it in the onboard Cache, and also represents the speed at which it communicates with its peripheral chipset. While each processor model operates at its own "native" Core speed, the bus speeds vary according to the motherboard (peripheral) Chipsets and memory with which they are designed to work. Likewise the cache size will vary from implementation to implementation. This distinction will become significant in as we move on.

An arrangement of Windows so each window is neatly stacked with only the title bar of each window is showing.

The X in the upper right corner of a window. When clicked, it will close the current window.

Go to Control Panel > Display > Settings and adjust the resolution there.

Or

Right click on an empty place on the desktop, choose "Properties" from the menu and then Settings.

The current window that is being used. The window you are working currently.

Example: If you are working on Paint so the active window is paint, if you working on Notepad so that time Notepad is Active window.

A temporary storage location in Windows. The clipboard will store one piece of information at a time when it is manually added to the clipboard or is copied there.

Ex: While copy any text firstly it is saved in clipboard.

Here's what to do:

  1. Go into Control Panel and click on the Display icon.
  2. In Display Properties, click on the Screen saver tab.
  3. In the Screen saver tab, click the Power button in the lower right-hand corner.
  4. Set "Turn off monitor", "System standby" and "System hibernates" to Never.
  5. Click Ok twice to complete the process.
  6. Your screen saver should now run indefinitely.

A vertical flashing line that shows the user where text will be inserted. In graphics-based programs, the insertion point is the point where the next characters typed from the keyboard will appear on the display screen. The insertion point is usually represented by a blinking vertical line. You can reposition the insertion point by pressing arrow keys or by moving the I-beam pointer.

We probably pressed the "insert" key on our keyboard. The toggle to "insert" is "replace". The "replace" works in some programs but not all.

Sometimes, despite all efforts, it seems impossible to find a particular piece of information about your computer. This is especially frustrating when you're attempting to resolve a problem, and a support technician asks you to provide a simple piece of data. Wouldn't life be a little easier if information about your operating system, hardware resources and components, and software settings was all in one place Microsoft System Information, which is included with almost all Windows systems, may be just what you need.

To check out Microsoft System Information:

  1. Go to Start > Run
  2. Type "msinfo32" into the Open field
  3. Click "OK"

Note: If "msinfo32" doesn't work, try "msinfo".

You must open a file to view or edit it. When you open a file, it is copied from the hard disk into the computer's high-speed memory. Memory is temporary workspace only. If you change the file, you must save it (which copies the file back to the permanent hard disk).

You can open a file by double-clicking on the file or right click on the file and click on 'Open'.

To link a file with a certain program. This way, when you double-click on an associated file, it will open the correct program.

Move the mouse pointer over the object you wish to drag, then hold down the left mouse button. While holding the mouse button, move the mouse pointer (and the object) to the location you want it, then let go of the mouse button. This will move or copy the object to the new location, depending on the context.

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 me that you can not save information onto these discs. CD-ROM may also refer to the drive used to read these discs.

A window that is open but is not active me the window is behind other window.

Example: You opened Notepad and Paint. Now Paint is on top and Paint window is above Notepad and currently you are working on Notepad. In this case Notepad is Inactive window.

Yes it can. To do so go to "Accessories" in the Start Menu and select "Command Prompt". You'll see a DOS-like box open to a command prompt. 

At the prompt, type the following command and hit enter:

Convert c: /FS:NTFS

The conversion won't start until you restart Windows. At that point, you'll see a strange screen on next startup. It will convert the file system and then reboot. Then you're done.

The system tray is that portion of the task bar (usually on the bottom of the screen-but you can drag it to either side or to the top!) that is on the right hand side displaying the clock and some of those programs that are running in the background. The portion on the left is the 'quick launch tray' because you can drag icons/shortcuts there and with a single click you can start or 'launch' the program.

An option form an application's menu, or a command typed in by the user, such as at a DOS prompt or at the Run dialog box in Windows.

We open command prompt for writing command: Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt

This is a small window that is demanding your attention (Usually to ask e.g 'Do you want to continue?'). You must respond before you can continue using the program that displayed the dialog box. A dialog box does not have a minimize or maximize button and does not show up on the taskbar. It is only a portion of its "parent" program. Most dialog boxes have a cancel button.

  1. First choose Start, Settings, and then Control Panel to open the Control Panel.
  2. Choose Modems.
  3. Select the entry for your modem, and choose the Properties button to open the Modem Properties dialog box.
  4. Choose the Connection tab, and then the Advanced tab button to open the Advanced Connection Settings dialog box.
  5. The Extra Settings text box in the dialog box may already have some text in it. This text is actually a set of commands for the modem. Modem commands vary from one modem to the next, but most use the command MO - that's a zero, not a capital 0 - to tell the modem to keep the speaker off at all times. First make sure that the text box does not already have a command beginning with M. (And note that &MO, /MO, and MO are three different commands.) If there is an M command already, replace it with an MO command. If there is not an existing M command, simply type MO in the text box. (It's okay to add it at the end of other commands that are already there.) Choose OK, and Windows will send the command to the modem every time it dials a connection. If this does not work, you'll need to check your modem manual to see if the modem has an oddball command for controlling the speaker.

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 me 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.

A dialog box such as a File menu that contains one command until it is clicked when a number of different commands "drop-down."

Example: While sign up you need to select country, and there are many countries already in the menu box and from there you need to select one (e.g India).

You can download a boot disk from www.wisdomjobs.com When you open the file, have a formatted floppy in the floppy drive, because it copies the files over automatically. With this disk, it will allow us to boot to dos mode.

This is what you see on your computer screen when you have no windows open. It may be a solid color, or it may be graphics. On the desktop, there will be icons, including one called "My Computer" and one called "The Recycle Bin."

To see all that has been added to your machine go to windows update and look at: VIEW HISTORY.

We can get the basic information about our computer by following below steps:

  1. Right Click at my computer icon.
  2. Click Properties.
  3. General tab will show the processor and ram information
  4. And Hardware Tab >> Device Manger will show the entire hardware resources attached with you computer.

There are a couple of things to recommend:

  1. Try replacing the batteries in the mouse if it is wireless.
  2. Try removing the mouse ball and cleaning the rollers inside the mouse with a Q-tip. Often that residue is quite sticky. They sell kits with a "velcro" ball you clean the rollers with by putting it in place of the regular ball.
  3. If that doesn't fix the problem, buy a new mouse. Optical mice don't have balls.
  4. If that doesn't resolve it, you may need to hire a technici to trouble shoot the problem.

Before you leave, check the home page of your ISP. Look for "Web mail" or something similar. If you can not get your mail there, here is a URL that works with any mail when you are away from home.

For Windows, a keyboard accelerator is represented by an underlined letter on a button, menu or other label.

On recent versions of Windows, they are hidden until you press the Alt key. Then you can hit that letter to select the menu, button or other input control.

Copy and paste just the text of the email into a page of WordPad, or a favorite word processor. The >>> that represent the number of times it has been forwarded can be removed from the text like this: With your text Pasted into WordPad, click Edit, then Replace.

In the space provided type one > or what ever you may want to remove. Then click Replace All. Now you can again copy the text without the >> and paste it into a blank email page.

Any data storage device. This includes your CD-ROM drive, floppy disk drive, and hard disk drive (C Drive, D Drive etc).

  • Click *Start*, Click *Run*
  • In the text box, enter *SendTo* (without the quotes and no space between the words).
  • Click OK.....the *Send To* window will open, In the *Send To* window,
  • Click *File*, Click *New*, Click *Shortcut*,
  • Click *Browse* to find folder you want to add to the *Send To* list
  • Click it and then click *OK*, Click *Next*, Click "Finish*

All household hazardous materials including electronic components (VCRs, computers, monitors, computer parts etc.) can be dropped off at the Household Hazardous Waste Drop Off Locations in Lee County, FL. For information, go to the Google and Find the information you want from the links. (In other locations, check with your waste collection company.)

A selection of colors that the user sees when using Windows. These colors make up the display of applications, dialog boxes, etc.

You can change it from Start -> Control Panel -> Appearance. Here you can change theme, window colors etc.

An icon is a picture used to represent an object. Some example objects are: data files, program files, folders, email messages, and drives. Each type of object has a different icon. That me that different types of files each have an icon representing its file type. 

Example: MS Word files will have the MS Word icon; MS Excel files will have the MS Excel icon; Etc.

Text formatting refers to the attributes of text other than the actual text itself. For example: bold, italics, underlining, color, and size, are all formatting attributes of text. The location of text can also be considered part of the formatting. Text can be automatically centered, indented, or positioned in other ways. When you wish to change the format of text, you usually have to select the text, then do the formatting by clicking the appropriate buttons. Occasionally, there are exceptions to the select-then-do paradigm. In Microsoft Word, there is a feature called Format Painter with which you click some already formatted text, then click the Format Painter toolbar button, then drag the mouse cursor across some other text. The other text will be "painted" with the formatting of the original text selected. If you double-click the Format Painter button, then it will be "locked" and you can paint lots of text. When you are done, click the Format Painter button again to turn it off.

Example: In notepad, click on 'Format' -> Click on 'Font...' -> Here you can change the text formatting.

A toolbar is a collection of buttons, usually organized by category. Some programs allow you to turn individual toolbars on and off (to display or hide them), and you may even be able to customize the toolbar by changing what buttons are shown (or even add your own buttons). Often, you can drag a toolbar (by dragging from an edge of the toolbar where there is no button) to move it to a different location on the screen. If a novice user does this, though, the user may not know what he or she did and may "lose" the toolbar. Usually, you can turn toolbars on and off by clicking the "view" menu, then choosing "toolbars".

A bar that usually runs at the bottom of Windows which shows all tasks that are currently being run. The Start button is usually on the left side of the Taskbar. A clock is usually on the right side of the Taskbar. The Taskbar can be moved to any edge of the screen, and the clock and Start button can be removed if desired. task list A list of applications that are currently running. Windows users can access the Task list by pressing Alt + Tab.

It me Original Equipment Manufacturer. OEM me in the automotive industry, this refers to a manufacturer of vehicles that provides the original product design and materials for its assembly and manufacture.

An established communication session between a server and a workstation.

For windows network connection can be checked from Start -> Control Panel -> Network and Internet.

Retrieving a file from a BBS, an FTP site, or a remote computer.

Using a modem to dial into a remote site network.

Start -> Control Panel -> Phone and Modem