How would you answer these interview questions?

I'm curious on how much your answer could deviate

1. What are trace routes and the purpose of them?
2. What does DNS stand for and the purpose of it?
3. What is PING?
4. If a person was to log into their PC and log-in didn’t work, how would you troubleshoot that?
5. If a person was able to log-in to a PC but wasn’t able to access any network folders, what would you do?
6. If you get a blue screen of death, how would you troubleshoot that?
7. How do you troubleshoot email connectivity issues?
8. If you can’t log-in to your computer, what is the first thing you would check?
9. What is a .pst file in Outlook? What would you do if the .pst was corrupted? How do you create a .pst file?
10. If a local user profile is corrupted, what would you do to repair it?

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RouteMyPacket

google.com

gorebrush

@RouteMyPacket

I get where you're coming from, but surely an interviewer wouldn't be impressed with that answer...

gbdavidx

Looks like help desk questions!

gbdavidx

Short and sweet answers
1. What are trace routes and the purpose of them? Show the hops it takes to get to a destintion via IP or website
2. What does DNS stand for and the purpose of it? domain name resolution, converts ip addresss to names humans can understand
3. What is PING? tests network connectivity and response time
4. If a person was to log into their PC and log-in didn't work, how would you troubleshoot that? this question is confusing and I would ask to clarify what their trying to logon to
5. It able to access any network folders, what would you do? Remote in and see if they are on the network, check their permissions
6. If you get a blue screen of death, how would you troubleshoot that? use an app an view the mini **** file crash file, google the file that's causing the error
7. How do you troubleshoot email connectivity issues? use OWA to see if it's online or a local profile issue, use cache exchange mode, create new profile in outlook, make current profile an old profile, multiple things
8. in to your computer, what is the first thing you would check? domain, log on to option, also check to see if their pingable
9. What is a .pst file in Outlook? What would you do if the .pst was corrupted? How do you create a .pst file? fie, new, outlook data file
10. If a local user profile is corrupted, what would you do to repair it? Use the PST recovery file that gets installed on the PC in the outlook file

Agent47

Agree with gbdavidx, I would definitely keep the answers as short as possible and to the point. Do NOT ramble.

Deathmage

gbdavidx wrote: »

Short and sweet answers
10. If a local user profile is corrupted, what would you do to repair it? Use the PST recovery file that gets installed on the PC in the outlook file

Only thing I'd suggest doing as an alternative to this is log onto the local administrator or domain administrator profile on the computer the local profile resides (ie a Terminal Server in console mode) and rename the users folder JohnSmith to JohnSmith.old and then go to start and go to Registry (regedit) and search from ProfileList in the Current Users hive and delete the SID of the user in question. This would re-hash the profile from the networks domain controller or roaming profile storage location. It's important you rename the user folder .old so that the profile starts on a clean slate and so you can copy over files to the new profile once created.

W Stewart

Let's see if I can answer these questions after finishing a 32oz malt liquor.

1. What are trace routes and the purpose of them? A tool that is used to trace the route that a packet takes to get from one destination to the next as well as the time it takes to get to each hop.
2. What does DNS stand for and the purpose of it? Domain Name Service but acronyms really aren't important. It translates domain names to ip addresses and that's probably all a basic question like that warrants.
3. What is PING? A basic network connectivity test using the icmp protocol.
4. If a person was to log into their PC and log-in didn’t work, how would you troubleshoot that? Send them to the help desk to reset the password since they obviously don't remember it.
5. If a person was able to log-in to a PC but wasn’t able to access any network folders, what would you do? Send them to the windows guys to set up the network shares because I've got better things to do.
6. If you get a blue screen of death, how would you troubleshoot that? Install linux
7. How do you troubleshoot email connectivity issues? Check the incoming and outgoing mail server settings and my credentials. Ensure that the mail servers are online and accepting traffic from the ports that I'm connecting to with nmap if it's legal.
8. If you can’t log-in to your computer, what is the first thing you would check? If my password didn't work after 3 attempts then I'd have to single user mode the box and reset the password. If single user mode is protected I'd pass the shell as the init process. If it's a domain account then I'd have to check with the windows guys.
9. What is a .pst file in Outlook? What would you do if the .pst was corrupted? How do you create a .pst file? Some sort of profile configuration setting in outlook. If it's corrupted I think you can just delete it and set up your account again but you'd have to check with a windows guy.
10. If a local user profile is corrupted, what would you do to repair it? Check with a windows guy.

PurpleIT

Agent47 wrote: »

Agree with gbdavidx, I would definitely keep the answers as short as possible and to the point. Do NOT ramble.

Maybe it's just me, but I think rambling can be a good thing (if you know what you are saying)...

What are trace routes and the purpose of them? Show the hops it takes to get to a destintion via IP or website

Instead of the fairly terse answer given, I would talk about how it it can show WHERE the failure is which can lead to all sorts of different issues. It may be a routing issue (wrong route, routing loops, etc), it may be a dead device (it hits a dead end), it may even be a firewall/router that is blocking ICMP. Heck, it may even show that you have a DNS issue.

Careful, intentional rambling allows you to show that you have a depth of knowledge and you didn't just memorize the glossary from a CCENT book.

"As a matter of fact, I was just working with someone who was setting up a new firewall. He couldn't ping anything on the Internet from his workstation and we used ping and tracert to narrow down the scope of his problem so we could see that the inside and outside networks were connected properly, but traffic was failing to pass through the firewall. This led him to discover that he had not set up NAT properly. Once he fixed that he was online and everything was great."

That takes an extra 30 seconds to say, but conveys 100 times more information.

W Stewart

^^^ I agree. I've always managed to impress interviewers by giving long in depth answers rather than short basic answers. I'd say my track record with actually getting the job offer has been pretty good since I started doing that.