What happens when a file on the hard disk is deleted by pressing Shift and Delete together?

The correct answer is B, F2. Selecting a file in File Explorer and pressing F2 puts its name into edit mode, so the new name can be typed directly; the same result is got by right-clicking and choosing Rename. A is wrong because F1 opens Help and Support in Windows and in most Microsoft programs. C is wrong because F5 refreshes the contents of the active window, which is useful when a newly saved file does not appear in a folder; in a browser it reloads the page. D is wrong because F12 has no renaming role in Windows; in Microsoft Word it opens the Save As dialog box, which is why it tempts candidates who recall only that it has something to do with file names. Remember the trio F2 to rename, F5 to refresh and F3 to search.

The correct answer is B, New Technology File System. NTFS was introduced with Windows NT and is now the normal file system for the disk on which Windows itself is installed, because it supports file and folder permissions, encryption, compression, journaling that helps recovery after a crash, and very large volumes and files. A is wrong because NTFS is a disk file system and not a protocol for transferring files over a network; that work is done by FTP and by network file sharing. C and D are wrong because no such file systems exist; they are invented expansions placed in the options. For comparison, FAT32 cannot hold a single file larger than four gigabytes, and exFAT is preferred on pen drives and memory cards because it crosses that limit and works on more than one operating system.

The correct answer is C, colon. Windows reserves nine characters for paths, drives and wildcards and will not accept them in a file name: the backslash, the forward slash, the colon, the asterisk, the question mark, the double quotation mark, the less than and greater than signs, and the vertical bar. The colon is reserved because it follows a drive letter, as in C colon. A is wrong because a hyphen is allowed and is commonly used to separate words in a file name. B is wrong because the underscore is allowed and is the usual substitute for a space in names meant for the web. D is wrong because the full stop is allowed and is in fact required, since the part after the last full stop is the extension that tells Windows which program should open the file.

The correct answer is A, subdirectory. Because a folder, also called a directory, can contain further folders, the storage of a drive takes the shape of a tree, and a folder held within another is its subdirectory or subfolder. B is wrong because the root directory is the topmost folder of a drive, the one that contains everything else on it and has no parent; it is written as C colon backslash. C is wrong because a partition is a logically separated part of a physical disk that the operating system treats as a drive with its own letter, not a folder. D is wrong because a cluster is the smallest unit of disk space that a file system allots to a file, a hardware-level block of sectors; a small file still occupies one whole cluster, which is why the size on disk can exceed the size of the file.

The correct answer is B, clipboard. The clipboard is the area of main memory in which Windows keeps whatever was last cut or copied, so that it can be pasted into the same program or another one; since it lives in volatile memory, its contents are lost when the computer is shut down or restarted. A is wrong because cache memory is the small, very fast memory between the processor and the main memory that stores frequently used instructions and data to speed up processing. C is wrong because a register is a storage location inside the processor itself, holding a single operand or address during execution. D is wrong because buffering is the general technique of holding data while it moves between devices of different speeds, as when a video is loaded ahead of playing; it is not the named store used by cut, copy and paste.