My OS Review and Advice...

Go Bucks

I took and passed the OS yesterday and I am now A+ certified

For those of you just beginning this as your first cert here's what I can tell you:

1) If you are in the market for a new pc buy the parts and build your own if you haven't done so in the past. This will help you for both the Core and OS as you will be covering both in the build. Or if you have a newer pc and/or can't afford another one yet go buy a flea market pc (preferably one that works) strip it down to just the case and rebuild it.

2) Go buy the Mike Meyers All-In-One book. It covers the material as if you know next to nothing about computers and it has testing software with it. I bought it because others on this board recommended it. I also recommend the Exam Cram 2 book for the practice cd's alone. I bought the combo pack that had the main study book and a questions and answers book from Amazon.

Each book had a cd with testing software on it. The main book had Prep Logic and the Q&A book had MeasureUp. I can't tell you enough how much these helped me for the actual test. Take them over and over and over and over and ...well you get the point. Both books also come with a Cram Sheet (the same) to refresh your memory with key terms and concepts before testing. All in all, I spent around $68 for all of my study books brand new and I've seen them cheaper than that since I bought them some time after Thanksgiving.

3) For you younger people who grew up in a world without daily blue screens of death, get a copy of Windows 95/98 and play around with it. You need to know how to get to the device manager, control panel, system tools, etc on these OS's as well as NT/2k/XP. I used VMware to load up the following OS's to practice with: 95/98/NT/2k/XP. This is a much better option than dual booting or multiple pc's if you just want to play around with finding the different paths to utilities and deleting/restoring files from the command prompt.

4) Get your vouchers from Getcertify4less.com (sponsor of this site) or at studyexam4less.com. These sites are setup in the same manner and i believe they have the same parent company. I bought my first one for $99 as it was about to expire from Getcertify and my second one for $99 from studyexam. You have to pay studyexam $7 for a code that you use at Vue checkout when you schedule your exam. This code lets you take the test for $91.xx which totals up to just under $99 and you have a little more room in scheduling the test than the early expiry ones from Getcertify.

5) Use free online resources that are at your disposal. I am so glad that I found this board early on in my cert quest as it has steered me in the right direction. The members are knowledgeable and have been where you are (or are where your are) and will help you avoid the mistakes they might have made. The Technotes are also a great day before the test brush up of everything you have covered in your books. Take all of the free test questions here and at mcMCSE.com and Free-Tests.com. I'm sure there are others, but this is what I used to succeed.

6) Relax! As this is probably your first cert exam, you'll probably be nervous going in as I know I was. I found that the actual tests were easier than my practice tests. If you go into the exams prepared you'll see what I mean 10 questions in. A giant relief will come over you and you'll settle down for the remainder of the test.

7) Don't change answers on the test unless you are 100% sure you had the wrong answer checked! Your first instinct is almost always right. I marked about 8 questions for review yesterday and didn't change but maybe one of them. If you are not 90% sure of a question, answer it the first time through to the best of your ability and mark it for review. If the rest of the test doesn't spark your memory about that question or sometimes clearly give you that answer in another question, leave your initial response be.

This is definitely the longest post I've had, but if it helps anyone who is just getting started it will have been worth it. Just remember to LEARN the material and not MEMORIZE it. There's a big difference between the two.

cairtaker

Sounds familiar. Thats where i got my discount vouchers. Also, I did not mark any for review. No changes, go with your first instincts. Just finished mine yesterday. Congrats to you. Onward...Forward...

huzzx

Hey Go Bucks,

I appriciate your indepth post. I've recently passed the Core HW, and now on my way to start studying for the OS. I think I will get the Meyers book ASAP. I've managed to pass CORE HW without it because I've been building my own PC since '00. But I have no experience with system files as stated in COmptia's OS objective. It seems to me that it is full of strict memorization. What each system file does, and where it's located. I would really need to spend a lot of time using each OS to understand where everything is and what each file does.

Right now I'm really hesitant to start because I'm just looking over at the overwhelming amount of material to understand and memorize. Should I start from MS-DOS and work my way up to the most recent OS? Would that be the best study approach? And would VMware (what is the file name exactly?) allow me play around with each MS OS that's required by Comptia?
Thx for your help.
Tony

Webmaster

Congratulations! and thanks for sharing!

Go Bucks

VMware is a seperate third party program and is not included with any OS. They do have a free 30 day trial at their website. It isn't necessary to have VMware, but it makes it easy if you happen to own a lot of the older OS's or if in particular you need access to Linux.

You can get by with only using two OS's for the exam. I would recommend one of the FAT systems (95/98/ME) and one of the NTFS (NT/2000/XP) XP is the logical choice of the NTFS and I would use either 95 or 98 as your FAT system.

Once you learn which boot files go with which OS, the rest of it will fall into place. The Meyers book will explain it as if you know very little. I would also recommend reading the hardware chapters after you finish your OS test. Even though you are experienced, you'll pick something up that you can use.

A good portion of the test is knowing how to navigate through Windows. For example: knowing how to get to the device manager from Windows 95 is control panel/system/device manager and in XP it's control panel/system/hardware tab/device manager. There's other ways to get there and you'll have to know them too.

If you have used any Windows OS with any frequency over the years the others aren't that different in how you access their utilities that you'll be using to troubleshoot/maintain computers.

Read all of the OS chapters, take LOTS of practice tests, and no matter what your mom told you, spend LOTS of time in front of the computer.

huzzx

I just installed VMware. But I can't get it to work. Say's Operating System not found. Would you mind explaining to me how this program works? I have Windows ME CD, and looking for Win 98 right now. Thx again. I'll be picking up the Meyers book tomorrow. But for now, I would like to play around with older OS. I have used 95,98,ME,2k, but if asked where each folder or each file is, I'm totally blank.

Go Bucks

I'm assuming you have VMware installed and working. I have a full version and I'm not sure if the trial has any limitations, but here is how you add a new OS.

Open VMware and click File -> New -> Virtual Machine

click Next -> leave the vm configuration as Typical and click Next

select the version you want to install from the drop down menu and Next

click Next until you get to the Network Connection and just select "Do not use a network connection"

at the Disk Capacity screen check the "Allocate all disk space now" and click Finish.

You'll then have to go through all of the steps that you normally would to install an OS. Don't let partitioning and formatting fool you into thinking you'll wipe your entire hard drive. You'll only be using the 4 gigs (default value) that you set aside for the OS. This will have no affect on your main OS.

once you have installed the OS you can simply click on the tab of the OS you want to run and click the start virtual machine button.

A few keys to know is ctrl+alt+enter will toggle full screen on/off, ctrl+alt+insert inside of the virtual machine takes the place of ctrl+alt+delete. If the vm locks up for some reason ctrl+alt+delete will get you back to the "real" desktop in a few seconds.

huzzx

Thx for your help.

I followed all the steps except Allocate all disk space because it was taking too long. After the I click finish, I click on the command "start this virtual machine" with my Win ME disk in the cd-rom, but pressing F2, F12, or Esc for boot did not work, and as the system was loading up, it says OS not found and no bootable disk detected.
ANy ideas?

Go Bucks

I had a similar problem with 2000. Do you have a bootable floppy? Try loading up XP or 98 (if you found it) as I know those two will work for sure.

huzzx

I have win XP, can't find '98. I'm currently running XP. I'll load up XP as soon as I find it for the sake of testing to see if I can get this program to work.

So as I'm running the virtual OS, and during the startup in the blackscreen, I should be able to press Esc for boot sequence, or F2, or F12?

Go Bucks

Don't press anything at the VMware splashscreen. Just let it do its thing.

paige1

It is information like this that makes this board such a great place.

Thanks for sharing

huzzx

THx for the advice, but I give up.

If I dont press anything at the black loading screen when I start a virtual machine, it will stop and say Operatiing System Not Found. Then a messsage box appears saying No Bootable CD detected etc... I tried changing autodetect to drive (where the OS cd is), but its the same thing.

I'm just going to have to read about older OS, or go to some1's house that has it.

Plantwiz

Congratulations "GoBuck".

Nice post!