F1. Hardware, devices and troubleshooting

Outcome: you can identify, install and troubleshoot PC, laptop, mobile and printer hardware, and you work every problem with the same troubleshooting method.

Skills: the CompTIA troubleshooting method, motherboards, CPUs, RAM, storage, power supplies, BIOS/UEFI and the boot process, display and peripheral connectors, laptops and mobile devices, printers, virtualization and cloud concepts.

Labs

1. Take apart the spare PC, identify every component, put it back together and boot it. Record each part's specs and connector types.
2. In UEFI, change the boot order, turn virtualization support (VT-x or AMD-V) and Secure Boot on and off, and set then clear a firmware password.
3. Add or swap RAM or a drive, then confirm the change in the operating system and in Disk Management.
4. Install VMware Workstation on the lab host and a Windows 11 VM. Snapshot it as clean-install.
5. Pair a phone with a laptop over Bluetooth, share the phone's hotspot, and add an email account to the phone. Note what each setting does.
6. Fault practice: a partner breaks one thing on the spare PC (pulls a RAM stick, unplugs a drive, changes the boot order). Find it using the six steps of the method.

Prove it: a hardware inventory of the spare PC, plus three troubleshooting tickets (symptom, theory, test, fix, check, notes) written in the order of the CompTIA method.

Certs: A+ Core 1 (hardware 25%, hardware and network troubleshooting 28%, mobile devices 13%, virtualization and cloud computing 11%).