200+ Operating System MCQ Questions and Answers

Test your knowledge of Computer Fundamental - [ Operating System ] section with these interactive multiple-choice questions.

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61. What is 'temporal locality' in memory hierarchy?

  • a) Recently accessed items are likely to be accessed again soon
  • b) Data physically close to each other is accessed together
  • c) Memory addresses are time-stamped
  • d) RAM speed varies with temperature
Answer: A - Temporal locality optimizes cache performance (used in LRU algorithms).

62. Which Windows API handles process/thread management?

  • a) Win32 API
  • b) DirectX
  • c) .NET Framework
  • d) WDM (Windows Driver Model)
Answer: A - Win32 provides functions like CreateProcess() and CreateThread().

63. What is 'dining philosophers problem' an example of?

  • a) Deadlock scenario
  • b) Memory fragmentation
  • c) Disk scheduling
  • d) Page replacement
Answer: A - Classic synchronization problem demonstrating circular wait conditions.

64. Which Linux kernel subsystem manages device drivers?

  • a) Device Mapper
  • b) Sysfs
  • c) udev
  • d) All of the above
Answer: D - Linux uses multiple subsystems for dynamic device management.

65. What is 'working set' in memory management?

  • a) Pages actively used by a process
  • b) Total installed RAM
  • c) Swap space allocation
  • d) Kernel memory footprint
Answer: A - Used to optimize page fault rates by tracking recent memory accesses.

66. Which command shows real-time process metrics in Linux?

  • a) top
  • b) ps
  • c) vmstat
  • d) netstat
Answer: A - top provides dynamic CPU/memory/process monitoring.

67. What is 'journaling' in file systems?

  • a) Logging changes before committing to disk
  • b) Encrypting directory structures
  • c) Compressing file metadata
  • d) Defragmenting storage blocks
Answer: A - Prevents corruption after crashes (used in ext3/ext4/NTFS).

68. Which Windows component provides hardware abstraction?

  • a) HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)
  • b) Registry
  • c) Win32k.sys
  • d) CLR (Common Language Runtime)
Answer: A - HAL allows Windows to run on diverse hardware architectures.

69. What is 'priority inversion' problem?

  • a) High-priority task waits for low-priority task
  • b) CPU ignores priority levels
  • c) Memory allocation fails for high-priority processes
  • d) Deadlock between equal-priority tasks
Answer: A - Solved by priority inheritance protocols (e.g., in Mars Pathfinder).

70. Which Linux command archives files?

  • a) tar
  • b) zip
  • c) gzip
  • d) cpio
Answer: A - tar -cvf archive.tar dir/ creates uncompressed archives.

71. What is 'memory-mapped I/O'?

  • a) Accessing hardware registers via memory addresses
  • b) Swapping RAM contents to SSD
  • c) Virtual memory allocation technique
  • d) Disk caching mechanism
Answer: A - Used for efficient device communication (e.g., GPU buffers).

72. Which scheduling algorithm is used in Linux CFS (Completely Fair Scheduler)?

  • a) Red-Black Tree based
  • b) Round Robin
  • c) Multilevel Queue
  • d) Shortest Job First
Answer: A - CFS uses RB trees to track process virtual runtime for fairness.

73. What is 'zero-copy' technique?

  • a) Transferring data without CPU involvement
  • b) Emptying RAM before shutdown
  • c) Compressing files to zero size
  • d) Skipping disk write operations
Answer: A - Improves performance by avoiding redundant data copies (used in sendfile()).

74. Which Windows feature enables secure credential storage?

  • a) Credential Manager
  • b) BitLocker
  • c) Windows Defender
  • d) Registry Editor
Answer: A - Stores passwords/certificates encrypted in the Windows Vault.

75. What is 'second chance algorithm' used for?

  • a) Page replacement
  • b) Deadlock recovery
  • c) Disk error correction
  • d) Process priority adjustment
Answer: A - Enhancement of FIFO that checks reference bits before eviction.

76. Which Linux command changes process priority?

  • a) nice/renice
  • b) chpri
  • c) priority
  • d) setpri
Answer: A - nice -n 5 command runs a process with adjusted priority.

77. What is 'NTFS junction point'?

  • a) Directory hard link in Windows
  • b) Disk partition marker
  • c) Network file share
  • d) Registry key pointer
Answer: A - Similar to Linux symbolic links but for directories.

78. Which of these is a Linux security module?

  • a) SELinux
  • b) iptables
  • c) sudo
  • d) chroot
Answer: A - Security-Enhanced Linux enforces mandatory access controls (MAC).

79. What is 'reentrancy' in kernel programming?

  • a) Function can be interrupted and safely called again
  • b) Recursive function calls
  • c) Reloading kernel modules
  • d) Memory reallocation
Answer: A - Critical for interrupt handlers and multi-threaded kernels.

80. Which command displays kernel messages in Linux?

  • a) dmesg
  • b) syslog
  • c) kmsg
  • d) kernlog
Answer: A - dmesg | grep error filters boot-time kernel errors.
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