Lesson 5: Windows Technician Practical

Core path: 42 minutes

A Windows technician does not get tickets labeled "Objective 1.4" or "use Disk Management now."

You get symptoms and requirements. Your job is to select the correct Windows boundary, tool, setting, or deployment path.

Ticket A: edition mismatch

Requirements:

• domain join;
• BitLocker;
• Group Policy management;
• inbound Remote Desktop host capability;
• supported TPM/UEFI platform.

The proposed edition does not provide all required features.

Document which requirement invalidates the choice.

Ticket B: 30-laptop deployment

Requirements:

• same approved Windows image/configuration;
• minimal technician touch;
• organization network available;
• user data is not yet present.

Compare manual USB installation, image deployment, remote network installation, and zero-touch deployment. Choose the strongest fit and state one dependency.

Ticket C: new drive missing in Explorer

Evidence:

• firmware detects the drive;
• Device Manager does not show a hardware error;
• Disk Management sees the disk but no usable mounted volume exists.

Stay at the disk/partition/volume boundary.

Ticket D: nightly CPU spike

Evidence:

• Task Manager shows the spike at the same time each night;
• Task Scheduler contains a job starting at that time;
• Event Viewer confirms the task launches.

Use the evidence chain instead of declaring malware from high CPU alone.

Ticket E: network share failure

Evidence:

• IP/gateway/DNS configuration is correct;
• server responds;
• direct UNC path works;
• mapped drive references an old share path.

Investigate mapping with the net use concept rather than changing DNS.

Ticket F: policy-controlled setting

Evidence:

• user changes a local setting;
• it returns after policy refresh;
• gpresult shows the setting is managed.

The correct action may be documentation/escalation to the policy owner, not repeated local edits.

Ticket G: one application blocked

Evidence:

• network works;
• application requires one approved communication path;
• local firewall blocks that path.

Design the smallest appropriate firewall exception. Do not disable the firewall globally.

Ticket H: damaged Windows install

Evidence:

• user data backup verified;
• recovery environment available;
• hardware healthy;
• system files are damaged;
• destructive clean install has not yet been justified.

Choose a repair/recovery-first plan and identify when escalation to clean installation would become reasonable.

Final practical record

Complete four tickets:

requirement or symptom:
objective area:
last proven-good boundary:
Windows tool / setting / command / deployment method:
why selected:
state-change risk:
controlled action:
rollback/recovery consideration:
verification:

Windows objective defense

By the end of Week 11 you should be able to defend decisions involving:

• Windows editions and feature differences;
• installation/upgrade/deployment methods;
• GPT/MBR and formatting considerations;
• GUI administration tools;
• Windows settings/power/File Explorer options;
• command-line tools;
• domain/workgroup and network resources;
• firewall, IP/DNS/gateway, VPN/wired/wireless/WWAN, proxy, profiles, network paths, and metered connections.

Next we close the rest of Core 2 Operating Systems across OS families, macOS, Linux, application installation, and cloud productivity.