Good A+ Core 1 practice questions describe a situation with a few details that matter, then offer four answers that are all real technology. Your job is to find the detail that rules three of them out. That is a skill you can practice.
Below are five original questions written for the 220-1201 exam, one per domain. For each you get the answer, what is wrong with the other three, and one reading lesson to carry into the exam. Pick a letter before you scroll. If you have not looked at the exam format yet, start with what CompTIA A+ Core 1 is: it is a maximum of 90 questions in 90 minutes, passed at 675 on a scale of 100 to 900.
1. Mobile Devices (13%): why is the map so vague in the garage?
A field technician logs site visits on a company smartphone. Outdoors, the app pins her location within a few meters. When she logs a visit from the second level of an underground concrete parking garage, the app still shows a location, but the accuracy circle covers several city blocks. Location permission for the app is set to Always. What best explains the difference?
A. The phone's GPS radio is failing and should be replaced
B. Satellite signals cannot reach the phone underground, so it has fallen back to cellular tower positioning
C. The app's location permission has been changed to Never by the MDM policy
D. Bluetooth is switched off, so the phone cannot use location services
Answer: B.
GPS uses orbiting satellites and is accurate to a few meters with open sky, but concrete and earth block the signals. Cellular location estimates position from the signal strength of nearby towers. It works indoors, but only to tens or hundreds of meters. A sharp fix outdoors and a rough one underground is that fallback working as designed.
Where the other three go wrong:
- A ignores half the evidence. A failing GPS radio would not produce a precise fix outdoors.
- C would produce no location at all, not a vague one. The stem also tells you the permission is Always.
- D names a radio that is not part of this picture. The Location setting covers GPS, cellular and Wi-Fi positioning, and Bluetooth state would not change between outdoors and underground.
Reading lesson: separate "not working" from "working worse." A reduced-accuracy result means a feature is still running through a different method, so look for the method, not the broken part.
2. Networking (23%): which record stops the look-alike email?
A company publishes an SPF record, and its mail servers DKIM-sign every outgoing message. Customers are still receiving phishing emails whose visible From line shows the company's domain. The IT lead wants receiving mail servers to quarantine messages that fail authentication, and wants reports showing who is sending mail as the domain. What should be published?
A. A new MX record pointing to the company's spam gateway
B. A DMARC policy in a TXT record at _dmarc, with p=quarantine and a reporting address
C. A stricter SPF policy that tells receivers to reject mail from unlisted servers
D. A new DKIM key pair, with the new public key published in DNS
Answer: B.
SPF is the list of who may send. DKIM is the signature on what was sent. DMARC is the policy for what to do when those checks fail, plus reporting and alignment. Alignment matters here: DMARC requires the domain in the visible From header to match the domain that passed SPF or DKIM, which closes the gap the phishers use. The p=quarantine tag and a rua reporting address cover both requirements.
Where the other three go wrong:
- A controls the wrong direction of mail. An MX record tells the world where to deliver mail addressed to the company. It says nothing to other servers about mail claiming to come from it.
- C cannot see the problem. SPF checks the envelope sender, the MAIL FROM address, not the From header a person reads. Tightening it also adds no reporting.
- D fixes something that is not broken. The phishing mail is not signed with the company's key at all, and a new key does not tell receivers what to do with unsigned mail.
Reading lesson: when a stem lists requirements, match every one. "Quarantine" and "reports" together point to a single answer. An option that satisfies one requirement, or neither, is out.
3. Hardware (25%): which cable survives the stamping press?
A plant is adding a network connection for a quality-control workstation on the factory floor. The 40-meter run passes large electric motors and welding stations, indoors in floor-level cable trays. Both ends have copper RJ45 ports only. An earlier run of ordinary Cat 6 along the same path suffered constant errors. Which cable should the technician install?
A. Plenum-rated UTP
B. Direct-burial UTP
C. Shielded twisted pair (STP), properly grounded
D. Another run of standard UTP, rerouted 30 cm higher in the same tray
Answer: C.
Motors and welders produce electromagnetic interference. Twisting the pairs in UTP reduces crosstalk, but it does not block outside noise. STP adds a foil or braid shield, which is why it is the normal choice for factory floors. The detail people skip is grounding: an ungrounded shield does little.
Where the other three go wrong:
- A solves a fire-code problem. Plenum jackets are about smoke and flame in air-handling spaces above ceilings and below raised floors. This run is in floor-level trays, and the jacket does nothing for interference.
- B solves a moisture problem. Direct-burial cable is built to sit in the ground without conduit. Nothing here is underground.
- D keeps the cable that already failed. Moving it 30 cm along the same noisy path changes very little.
Fiber would also ignore the interference, which is why the stem rules it out: both ends are copper only.
Reading lesson: name the environmental hazard before you read the options. Fire, water and electrical noise each have their own cable answer, and the exam likes to offer all three.
4. Virtualization and Cloud Computing (11%): what lets the help desk rebuild a desktop it never touches?
A call center is replacing 60 aging PCs with low-cost thin clients. Management wants three things: agents' desktops and applications run centrally, the support team can patch or rebuild any agent's desktop without visiting the seat, and no customer data is stored on the devices at the desks. Which approach meets all three requirements?
A. Install a Type 2 hypervisor on each thin client and run a Windows VM locally
B. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), with desktops hosted on central servers
C. Run each agent's applications in containers on the thin clients
D. Give each agent a sandbox VM that is discarded at the end of every shift
Answer: B.
With VDI, the desktop operating system and its applications run on a central server or cloud platform, and the device at the desk only renders the session. Support can patch or rebuild a desktop without touching the endpoint, and data stays server-side. The three requirements describe that design.
Where the other three go wrong:
- A puts everything back on the endpoint. A Type 2 hypervisor runs on a local OS, so the VM and its data live on the device at the desk.
- C also runs locally. Containers are lightweight runtimes that share a host kernel; they do not move the desktop to a server.
- D uses a real VM purpose for the wrong job. A sandbox is a disposable environment for untrusted code or files. Throwing away an agent's desktop every shift does nothing to centralize it.
Reading lesson: ask where the workload physically runs. Many Domain 4 options sound modern, but only one of these four moves the work off the desk.
5. Hardware and Network Troubleshooting (28%): why does the reception PC forget the date?
This item is ordinary multiple choice, not a performance-based task, but it shows the step-by-step reasoning Domain 5 rewards.
The reception desktop at a dental office works normally all week. Every Monday, staff report the same thing: the firmware clock shows a date several years in the past, and the boot order has reset to its defaults. The office manager switches off the power strip under the desk every Friday evening. One weekend the PC was left powered as a test, and that Monday nothing was wrong. What should the technician do?
A. Configure the PC to synchronize with an internet time server
B. Replace the motherboard's CMOS battery, then re-enter the date, time and boot order in the firmware settings
C. Replace the power supply, since the problem appears after the power is cut
D. Update the BIOS/UEFI firmware to the latest version
Answer: B.
The CMOS battery, typically a CR2032 coin cell, keeps the real-time clock and firmware settings alive while the system has no AC power. When it dies, both reset on every cold boot. Here the reset follows the power strip being switched off, and the weekend left on confirms it. After the swap, re-enter the settings once and they persist.
Where the other three go wrong:
- A treats a symptom inside the operating system. Time sync could correct the Windows clock after boot, but it cannot preserve the firmware clock or the boot order while the machine is unplugged.
- C reads "after the power is cut" as "power supply fault." A failing power supply causes trouble while the PC is running, or stops it powering on at all. This PC runs normally all week.
- D is a larger, riskier change with no evidence pointing at it. A firmware update does not replace a coin cell that has run flat.
Reading lesson: working in order. CompTIA's methodology has six steps: identify the problem, establish a theory of probable cause, test the theory to determine the cause, establish a plan of action and implement the solution, verify full system functionality, and document findings, actions and outcomes. Here the Monday pattern and the power strip identify the problem, "dead CMOS battery" is the theory, and the powered weekend is the test. The swap is the fix, a cold boot afterward is the verification, and the ticket note is the record. The objectives document says the methodology is not a formal exam objective, so use it as a way to think.
What gives the wrong answers away?
Look back over the distractors and two families stand out. Some answer a neighboring question: plenum cable for a fire code nobody raised, an MX record for inbound mail, time sync for an operating system that was never at fault. Others overreach: a new GPS radio, a new power supply, a firmware update, when the evidence points at something smaller. Each stem also holds one sentence that rules out the strongest distractor, such as the sharp outdoor fix, the copper-only ports or the weekend left powered on. Find that sentence before you weigh the options. A+ Core 1 domains explained shows which objectives are written as scenarios.
How do you get more out of A+ Core 1 practice questions?
Five items teach a way of reading. They cannot tell you which objectives you are weak on; only a larger set, worked after each block of study, can do that.
The CompTIA A+ Core 1 220-1201 Study Guide has 133 practice questions organized in five domain banks, each with the correct answer explained and a note on why every distractor is wrong. Work a bank after that domain's chapters, and log every miss with the one sentence that would have saved it. The A+ Core 1 study plan shows where those banks fit. If you are judging readiness, how hard A+ Core 1 is explains what the scoring means in practice.
FAQ
Are these real A+ Core 1 exam questions?
No. All five were written for this post from the 220-1201 objectives and the teaching chapters of our study guide. They practice the same skills, but none is a recalled exam item, and any source offering real exam questions is one to avoid.
How many performance-based questions are on A+ Core 1?
CompTIA does not publish a number or say where they appear in the exam. The safest approach is to prepare every "Given a scenario" objective as if it could appear as a hands-on task.
Should I memorize the answers to practice questions?
No. Memorize why each wrong option fails instead. A repeated question scores higher than it should because you recognize it, and the real exam will not repeat it. The reasoning, unlike the letter, carries over to a question you have never seen.
Want more questions explained this way? The CompTIA A+ Core 1 220-1201 Study Guide gives each of the 27 Core 1 objectives its own chapter and adds 133 practice questions with every answer and distractor explained, plus worked performance-based drills and a glossary of the acronyms the exam assumes you know.
Simply Certified is an independent publisher. A+ and CompTIA are trademarks of CompTIA, Inc. Our books are independent study material and are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by CompTIA.