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Ictsas308 SW 1of1v1.1 PDF
Ictsas308 SW 1of1v1.1 PDF
ICTSAS308
Run standard diagnostic tests
TAFE NSW would like to pay our respect and acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as
the Traditional Custodians of the Land, Rivers and Sea. We acknowledge and pay our respect to the Elders,
both past and present of all Nations.
Version: 1.1
The content in this document is copyright © TAFE NSW 2019 and should not be reproduced without the
permission of TAFE NSW. Information contained in this document is correct at time of printing: 27 February
2020. For current information please refer to our website or your teacher as appropriate.
Practice activity
Collaboration
Self-check
Assessment task
Video
Videos will give you a deeper insight into the content covered in
this workbook. If you are working from a printed version, you will
need to look these up using the URL provided.
Successfully completing this unit of competency will give you the skills and knowledge to
troubleshoot problems, identify and implement preventative maintenance techniques, and
conduct diagnostic tests on a range of platforms.
Each topic includes opportunities to check your progress and understanding as well as
activities that will help you to complete the formal assessments.
The activities throughout this resource will assist you in your learning. These activities do not
form a part of your final assessment however they will contribute to your understanding of
the topic area.
There are five topics to complete within this workbook. They are:
1. Working in IT
2. Troubleshooting
3. Maintenance and schedules
4. Diagnostic tools
5. Anti-virus software.
When designing its structure, an organisation must first clearly identify its goals and the
tasks required to achieve them. Common tasks include establishing effective communication
and managing information and security. When an organisation reaches a certain size it
becomes vital that employees understand their role and how it relates to the organisation as
a whole, similar to how the army has roles and a chain of command. Information
communication technology (ICT) plays a key part in the success of modern day organisations
and it is common for one person, if not a team of people, to be solely dedicated to the ICT
requirements of the organisation.
Bob works as a computer support technician for a large corporation. One of the company
employees has reported his computer isn’t working as fast as it should be. Bob has a friend
that has just finished a programming course and written some software that diagnoses and
fixes common problems with computers. Bob has great faith in his friend’s ability and
decides to install and run the software on his work computer. What could be the negative
consequences of this? Should there be a company policy that only software which has been
tested and approved can be installed on company computers?
Policies define a set of rules, constraints and principles used to direct any course of action
taken for a cause such as achieving a goal or resolving a problem. In doing so they protect an
organisation from avoidable and possibly costly incidents.
Research organisational policies and list three common policies related to ICT. For each
policy, provide the name and a brief description of why the policy exists and how it benefits
an organisation.
Policy Description
• services provided
• reliability
• responsiveness.
Practice activity
Visit the link provided below and read the information on the ITIL Core Publications. Write
the names of the five core publications that illustrate the lifecycle model in the table below.
# Core Publication
• A request that includes that name and purpose of the software must be submitted to
the CIO.
• Licensing and legal requirements for the software must be verified to ensure the
organisation has or can purchase the appropriate license for using the software.
• The software must be tested on a computer that is isolated from the main network
to ensure stability and security concerns are met.
• The software must be stored in a central location and installed on all relevant
computers via a central software management mechanism, such as an application
store.
• The CIO must assign authority to the appropriate staff members for installing
software on company workstations.
• All installations of the software must be documented and recorded in the software
inventory log for future reference and compliance purposes.
Other important organisational procedures relating to ICT include procedures for:
• maintaining equipment.
Research and list three common procedures related to ICT. Provide the name of the
procedure and the main steps involved for completing the procedure in the table provided
below.
# Procedure
Upgrade hardware
In a different context, such as ICT support, employees may have varying degrees of flexibility
in terms of how they decide which tasks to perform and when. In some circumstances, it
won’t matter the precise order in which tasks are completed, so long as they’re completed
to the required standard and deadline. This is one of the factors that can be motivating in a
job role – the freedom and ability to decide when to complete individual tasks.
In other cases, the task order will matter and it’s important to know how to sequence those
tasks appropriately. This is where it’s important to be able to access the organisation’s
policies and procedures so that you have this understanding and knowledge.
Having established an understanding of what’s to be done in the work role, you should
assess and prioritise your workload. This will help you plan your tasks to ensure that the
most important or urgent priorities are tackled first and that time-sensitive activities are
completed within the required timeframe. A useful place to start is with a to-do list. This is
simply a list of tasks that are to be completed within a set time – this may be a day, week or
month, depending on the context of your role.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xky48zyL9iA
The activities throughout this resource will assist you in your learning. These activities do
not form a part of your final assessment however they will contribute to your understanding
of the topic area.
• Reduced performance – the computer is running slower than usual and applications
such as Microsoft Word are taking a long time to load or save files.
• Poor image quality – distorted images or crosshatched lines are being displayed on
the monitor.
• Start-up error – the computer cannot start (boot-up) and load the operating system.
• Applications not starting – after double-clicking the application’s icon the
application does not open.
• Computer freezing or not responding – the most common form of this is when the
mouse and keyboard just stop working and do not respond to any human input.
• Blue-screen error – this represents a fatal error has occurred with the operating
system.
• Peripherals not working – components such as speakers, printers or USB drives fail
to function.
Compatibility
Applications that were originally developed to target versions of Windows previous to
Windows 10, such as Windows 7, typically run well on Windows 10. In some cases, however,
some older applications can have issues when running on Windows 10. Windows 10 has a
built-in tool called Program Compatibility Troubleshooter which analyses applications and
adjust the application settings to run using settings of earlier versions of Windows. The
compatibility tool can be run for all installed applications via the Control Panel or a single
application by right-clicking on the application icon and accessing the Alt menu.
Figure 3: Compatibility troubleshooter single applications (right-click on the application icon to access option in alt menu)
Mobile device
Battery depletion
A common problem experienced with mobile devices if the life of a battery. If the battery
power depletes quickly there could either be a problem with the battery or there may be
services or applications that are using a lot of power. Applications that require a network
connection are known for consuming a lot of power.
To prevent fast depletion of a batter the following preventative measures can be taken:
• Try not to continue charging the phone after the battery charge has reached 100%.
Modern-day batteries and phones are a lot better than they used to be but
continuously charging a battery after it has already reached 100% can contribute to
reducing a battery’s capacity and aging faster than usual.
• Turn off unneeded services and applications. Again this is much better than it was in
the past but services such as location can be a continuous drain to a phone's battery.
Screen calibration
Over time, the alignment of a touchscreen, can lose precision. There are applications
available for re-calibrating the touchscreen which makes the required adjustments for
ensuring the touch location is accurate.
Laptop
Keep it clean
As with most computer hardware dust and grime can build up over time and if not cleaned
can eventually cause faults with the hardware. Cleaning your laptop on a regular basis can
increase the life of the laptop. Most electronic shops provide cans of compressed air that
can be used to blow out any excess dust in the laptop. This can be especially important for
the fans if excess dust builds up on the fans the laptop can overheat. Having a professional
cleaning service once a year is also good practice, the service provider will typically open the
laptop and thoroughly clean the internal component.
Shutdown
It is good practice to shut down a laptop via the operating system and not by pressing the
power button. Always use the option from the start menu and try not to leave the laptop on
overnight to prevent wear-and-tear.
Printer
Firmware or driver updates
As with other devices is it best practice to ensure the latest firmware and driver updates are
installed.
Operating System
Updates
Perhaps more important than applications is ensuring the operating system has the latest
updates available installed.
Diagnostic tools
Running common maintenance and diagnostic tools such as disk defragmenter and disk scan
help ensure the operating system is running as best as it can.
A common tool used is diagnostics software which identifies what the problem is, just like a
doctor might diagnose an illness in a patient diagnostic software can diagnose problems
with software or hardware.
Other tools include utilities that provide additional functionality to assist with fixing a
problem, a common utility is a boot rescue disk or recovery tool that allows access to a non-
working system so it can be repaired or to recover files.
Simplify
The more elements involved the harder it is to determine the location and cause of a
problem. As an example, if a computer will not start, one of the first steps that can be taken
to troubleshoot the problem is to disconnect any non-essential peripherals such as a printer
or external hard drive. Doing so will eliminate the possibility that the problem is due to a
faulty peripheral. If the computer successfully starts after the peripherals have been
disconnected then reconnecting the peripherals one at a time will identify what is causing
the problem. Another common method used for computers running Windows is to start the
computer in Safe Mode, Safe Mode only start applications and services critical to the
operating system which could allow you to at least start the computer and check the log
files in order to further investigate the problem.
Process of elimination
Similar to the first technique of simplifying the problem using the process of elimination can
assist with breaking the problem down and testing each element of the problem separately.
A common cause of computer problems can be a fault with the computer’s Random Access
Memory (RAM), Network, Sound or Graphics Card. By swapping out these components
one at a time you will eliminate each one of them as the cause of the problem. This is an
especially useful technique when many components are involved, another common
scenario is when there is no internet connectivity which could be due to the modem
needing a reboot, a network cable is unplugged or an issue with your Internet Service
Provider (ISP). By breaking down the problem and looking at each component you can
eliminate them one by one as the cause of the problem.
If so, this may be the cause and removing the hardware or uninstalling the software could
resolve the problem. Organisations typically have a ‘Change Request Form’ log that records
any changes in configuration or new hardware/software that has been installed. In this case,
a good place to start troubleshooting a problem is by looking for any recent changes.
This happens more often than you might think if a component such as a monitor, keyboard,
printer or mouse stops working or only works intermittently, verify the connection to ensure
it is properly fastened and not damaged. It is good practice to use cable ties to ensure cables
are properly fastened and cannot unintentionally be disconnected.
In most cases someone has experienced the same issue before and documented a solution;
the internet can be a wealth of knowledge and sites such as www.stackoverflow.com can be
of great assistance. If you are working for an organisation it is good practice to check places
such as the knowledge bank, frequently asked questions or log files for past issues that are
the same or similar to the issue you are troubleshooting.
Hardware can accumulate dust and grime which can affect their performance and possible
be the cause of a malfunction. Ensuring equipment is cleaned on a regular basis can assist in
preventing unnecessary failure and degradation of hardware.
Example: An employee has reported that their computer is running extremely slowly, on
receiving the support request the following information was collected:
Analyse
After all of the information has been collected the next step is to analyse it by comparing
the information against existing benchmarks and knowledge banks in order to identify any
anomalies that do not fall in the category of normal behaviour.
Example: The information collected on resources was compared with baselines and
everything was normal except for disk activity.
Eliminate
After analysing the information and comparing it to normal behaviour, some of the possible
causes can be eliminated due to no related erroneous or abnormal activity being identified.
Example: Problems with the CPU, Memory and Network traffic were eliminated.
Example: After further investigation and testing each hypothesis it was discovered that the
cloud backup software installed on the computer had a bug that was causing the software
to continuously scan the hard drive for file changes. The troubleshooting techniques that
assisted with identifying the problem include:
• Monitoring and inspecting all processes associated with hard drive activity.
• Inspecting change for request logs and identifying an update to the cloud backup
software occurred just prior to the problem occurring.
Computer beeps Identify and research any Start-up diagnostic Regular hardware
three times on error codes displayed on tools maintenance such
start-up the screen. as cleaning and
Most vendors of removing grime
If there are no error hardware provide and dust from
codes, sounds could be built-in diagnostic internal
used to indicate there is a tools that can be components.
problem. run prior to or on
start-up. These tools
Individually test and include utilities for
verify each of the testing the CPU, Testing and
following components: RAM, video, graphic verifying the
and network cards. functionality of
Random Access Memory components.
(RAM) Separate tools for
testing RAM also
Graphics card exist, these include
but are not limited
Sound card to MemTest86,
Windows Memory
Network card
Diagnostics and
Fans DocMemory.
Internet browser Verify network and Ping tool for testing Automatic
fails to show the internet connectivity. network updates.
homepage connectivity outside
Validate and reset of the browser.
browser settings.
Run Windows
troubleshooting tool
The laptop cannot Verify Wi-Fi network is Network diagnostic Regular network
connect to a available and test the tools such as maintenance such
wireless network connection to it with Windows network as ensuring both
another device. trouble-shooter and the laptop and
ping. access point have
Verify Laptop Wi-Fi the latest version
network adapter is turned of firmware,
on (some laptops allow software or
for turning it on/off with drivers.
a physical switch located
somewhere on the
laptop).
There are many systems available for documenting and managing ICT related issues. These
systems typically allow for managing the entire lifecycle of the troubleshooting process.
Self-check
Read the following questions and provide an answer in the space provided.
1. List four techniques that can be used when troubleshooting an ICT related problem.
# Technique
4. What are the five main steps when planning to troubleshoot an ICT related problem?
5. What are the six common symptoms that can be experienced when operating a
computer?
# Symptoms
Practice activity
Safe mode can be used to assist with troubleshooting issues with a computer, the most
common scenario is when a computer will not start and load Windows. Visit the link
provided below and follow the instructions for starting a computer in safe mode.
Practice activity
Below is an example issue tracker which you’ll use to enter the details of an incident.
Research and select a common issue that could occur with a computer in a business
environment. Ensure all fields have been completed and the incident is resolved
ICT-2
Collaboration
Work in groups and complete the missing information in the table below collaboratively.
Computer
beeps three
times on start-
up
The
application
does not start
when
shortcut/icon
on the desktop
is double-
clicked
Monitor goes
black after the
operating
system starts
to load
Internet
browser fails
to show the
homepage
The laptop
cannot
connect to a
wireless
network
• Preventative.
• Reactive.
Preventative maintenance
It is usually better to prevent a problem than fix it afterwards. For example, you periodically
have your car serviced, which involves changing the engine oil, air filter, spark plugs and so
on. If you don’t do this, chances are at some later time your car’s performance will suffer,
and you may even be stranded at a great inconvenience to you! This is preventative
maintenance, and the situation is really quite similar to ICT equipment. We need to carry out
preventative maintenance on a periodic basis to prevent problems occurring in the future
that may interrupt business continuity.
A simple example of ICT preventative maintenance is changing the drum in a laser printer.
Reactive maintenance
Reactive maintenance refers to actions taken to fix problems after they have occurred. To
continue with the car example, when you get a flat tyre and have to replace it, this is a
simple example of reactive maintenance. You can probably think of many ICT examples.
Replacing a broken cable is one.
Document title: ICTSAS308_SW_1of1
Resource ID: TBS_19_005_ICTSAS308_SW_1of1 Page 38 of 73
© TAFE NSW 2019
Apart from preventative and reactive maintenance, there is another type of maintenance
that deals with upgrading the organisation’s infrastructure to minimise the level of risk to
business continuity.
Software maintenance
It is not only the hardware that needs to be maintained – software maintenance is also
required. An organisation that has custom-built software needs programmers to maintain it.
This will include:
• preventative maintenance to detect and correct code that may cause future errors
(e.g. to validate input data)
• adaptive maintenance to adapt the software in line with changes to business
requirements (e.g. to make it run on an Intranet)
• perfective maintenance to simply improve the performance of the software
• reactive maintenance to fix software bugs.
Apart from custom-built software, organisations need to maintain other software. There
may be patches, version updates and driver updates to be installed. Upgrading packaged
software across an organisation to standardise software versions is a good way of helping to
reduce the level of support and maintenance required.
Maintenance of a hard disk is really a form of software and data maintenance. A variety of
tools are available for ‘cleaning up’ a disk, removing unwanted programs, and backing up
data. Protecting the system from viruses and malware is also part of this sort of
maintenance.
Specific devices require different preventative maintenance procedures. However, there are
a few broad areas that can be considered which require preventative maintenance practices.
• the implementation of early warning systems to detect water leaks, fire and air-
borne contaminants
• devices to continue power supply should there be a power failure such as an
Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) as well as on-site power generation
• security access to computer facilities such as swipe cards or entry of a security
number
• recording serial numbers, asset numbers, location and allocation details of
workstations.
Redundancy
If part of a network is interrupted, critical business processes need to be stored as soon as
possible. One way of doing this is by implementing and maintaining full or partially
redundant systems.
This means having an identical hardware infrastructure that can be activated should the
main hardware infrastructure fail. Redundant systems can range from the duplication of
entire networks to the duplication of cabling runs. Where entire networks are duplicated,
system backup facilities are not required. However, full network redundancy is extremely
expensive and, as such, not a commonly used option.
An organisation’s disaster recovery plan will include such procedures for recovering network
systems.
Humidity
Computers are also sensitive to humidity and should be kept dry. Protective measures would
include keeping them away from windows and avoiding food and drinks spills. Ventilation
systems also help prevent problems with humidity.
Scheduling can either be a manual or automated process, as an example cleaning the dust
out of computers could be manually scheduled to happen on a monthly basis while backing
up data could be automated scheduled to happen daily.
Other ICT tasks beyond common maintenance also need to be scheduled to ensure
compliance within the organisation. Tasks such as installing peripherals for example; printers
need to be planned and scheduled to ensure it meets the compliance requirements of the
organisation.
Follow the steps below to configure the backup settings for Windows 10
1. Press the Windows Start button and select the settings icon as shown
below.
4. Select ‘Add a drive’ from the ‘Back up using File History’ section of the window
5. The program will take a while to search for drives when this has finished selecting the
drive listed, the name of the drive might differ from the example below.
7. In the backup options change the frequency of ‘Back up my files’ to ‘Daily’ and ‘Keep my
backups’ to ‘1 Month’.
8. While in the Backup options, take some time to look at the other options that can be set,
such as included folders and where to back up to.
A commonly used diagnostic tool is scan disk; this tool will scan the computer’s hard disk and
look for any errors. If errors are detected it report them and attempt to fix them.
Practice activity
1. Open Windows File Explorer and navigate to ‘This PC’ as shown below.
6. When the scan has completed a dialog box with the results will be displayed.
Data stored on a hard drive can over time become disorganised and fragmented which can
cause a computer to run slowly. Performing a disk defragmentation gathers the data and
organises them in an efficient manner which improves retrieval time and the computer’s
overall performance. Follow the steps below to complete the process of defragging a
computer hard drive.
1. Open Windows File Explorer and navigate to ‘This PC’ as shown below.
5. To defragment and optimize a drive click the ‘Optimize’ button, the analysing and
optimisation process will start, as shown below.
Practice activity
1. From the Windows start menu either search or locate the icon for Notepad under
Windows Accessories and double left-click the icon to launch the application.
3. Next, we will launch ‘Task Manager’ to do this press the key combination Ctrl + Alt + Del,
you need to first press the Ctrl key, keep it held down while you press the Alt key and
then keep both Ctrl + Alt pressed down while you finally press the Del key. When this has
been done a screen with menu items will be displayed.
5. Click the ‘More details’ menu option located in the bottom left corner of the window.
7. To end the Notepad process right-click on the Notepad icon and select ‘End task’.
8. You will notice that the Notepad application has closed and is no longer listed under
running applications. As mentioned, stopping processes can be used when an application
becomes unresponsive, or a computer’s CPU or memory has reached capacity causing
the entire computer to slow down.
Practice activity
1. To start the diagnostics type ‘cmd’ into the search box for applications and the
‘Command Prompt’ icon will be displayed.
3. Windows will present a prompt asking ‘Do you want to allow this app to make changes
to your device?’, Click Yes.
4. The Command Prompt window will open and indicate that it is in Administrator mode in
the title bar, type the command:
• perfmon/report
into the command prompt and press the enter key. This command will launch the
‘Performance Monitor Reporting Tool’.
7. Examine the result from your diagnostic test, are there any errors. If so investigate the
error further. You will notice the error is broken down and contains the sections
symptom, cause, details and resolution.
• Install itself on a computer in a way that makes it difficult to detect and remove.
• Replicate itself from the infected computer to other computers.
• Perform routine system file management processes such as file deletion and boot
record modification.
• Copy information across a network link.
• Carry out its activities without any regard for the system or network resources it is
utilising.
Web-based viruses
The increased access to the Internet, combined with the increasing complexity of website
scripting has allowed many new areas for viruses. An Internet browser is designed to read
and execute scripts saved on websites. These scripts provide the content of web pages.
However, if a website script includes a virus script as part of the page, infections can occur.
This type of script is often in the form of a Java script, VB script or even an applet. Simply
visiting a site using a browser with low security settings will lead to virus infections.
Email-based viruses
Email viruses often appear in the form of an attachment. The simple act of opening an
attachment or even viewing an infected email may be sufficient to execute the virus code.
Email is quickly growing as one of the fastest transmission methods of viruses. When
installed on a computer, one of the first targets of an email-based virus is the address book
of the email client software. Viruses are capable of emailing themselves to every contact in
the address book of the computer.
The use of anti-virus software, and the procedures to be followed if a virus is discovered will
usually be covered by policies and procedures developed by your organisation. It is
important to become familiar with these procedures so that you will know what to do, and
what not to do, in the event of a virus attack.
Virus packages provide information about the version or date of the Virus Definition File. It
is vital that anti-virus software is kept up-to-date to maximise the computer’s protection
against a virus threat.
When your anti-virus program scans for viruses, it is looking for signs that a file has become
infected. Symptoms may be that a file has changed size unexpectedly or that the date may
have changed without user intervention. The anti-virus program will also scan for patterns
of bits, called signatures, which are known to match the program code of a virus.
These ‘bit patterns’ are stored in a database called a Virus Definition File. Since new viruses
are detected each day, it is important to keep your virus program up-to-date by obtaining
the latest versions of these definitions.
Some anti-virus software will check for viruses as you work. This means that when a file or
document is accessed, the anti-virus program will automatically scan it.
It is important for you to become familiar with the virus scanning software available on your
computer or used in your organisation.
The first action will normally be to report the results of the virus scan to the appropriate
person, usually a Systems Administrator or member of the Information Technology Support
section. This person will initiate the appropriate response to the virus, which may include
quarantining the machine by disconnecting it from the network, as well as attempting to
remove the virus, or at least stopping it from spreading.
The job of removing the virus may come back to you, but by following procedures and
reporting the virus you will assist in maintaining the organisation’s virus protection.
The Administrator may also log the virus details, and conduct an investigation into the likely
source of the virus and the method of infection. This is particularly important if the
organisation has anti-virus protection systems installed, as it may indicate that either the
anti-virus systems are faulty, or that some member of staff is doing something that breaches
the security of the organisation and allows a virus to bypass the anti-virus systems. In either
case, the Administrator may be able to identify the cause of the infection and take action to
stop it happening again.
The support site of the anti-virus software company will also provide tools, such as
documents, detailing virus cleaning procedures or utility programs that can be downloaded
to the infected computer to clean it.
The type of actions required to remove a virus is different for each version of a virus. There
are too many variations of viruses to even start to describe every removal procedure here.
However, when all else fails and a virus damages the computer, there is no substitute for
accurate backups. Any system installed should have a backup of the original state of the
computer system as well as backups of data.
Practice activity
Windows 10 comes with its own Anti-virus program, for this activity, we will perform a quick
scan to detect a virus.
To simulate a real virus we are going to use a file that is available that pretends to be a virus.
To do this:
1. Open Notepad
2. Copy the text below into the new Notepad file
3. Save the Notepad file as ‘virus.txt’ in the ‘My Documents’ folder
4. Click the ‘Scan now’ button and select the ‘Documents’ folder by navigating to ‘This PC’,
clicking on the ‘Documents’ folder to select it and then clicking the ‘Select Folder’ button
6. Select ‘Virus & threat protection’ again from the menu on the left side of the window.
You will notice that a ‘Threat history’ menu option is available along with a notification
below it stating that there have been threats found. Click on the ‘Threat history’ link
Watch
Video: Malware
Watch the following LinkedIn Learning course to learn about malware and how it works: