640-801, Sim didn't work!

andymay154

I sat the 640-801 exam this morning, got to question 2 which was a router sim. After starting this, coming out of a router and then trying to go back in I could no longer enter any commands. The admin at the test centre checked it and then called VUE who just said that I would have to carry on. I would have expected them to be able to restart the exam.

So not only did I lose the possible points for the sim, I also lost about 15 minutes and didn't have time to do another sim towards the end of the exam.

Has anyone else had this? Did you manage to get a free retake?

Anyway, despite this I managed to get 809.

Andy

rockstar81

id ring up and complain, they should give you a free retake.

wildfire

it depends what the sim was, without going into NDA I had a sim that involved "hopping onto" another router and if the wrong change was made there would be no way back in.
Also if you do spot any geniune problems use the comment button on the bottom to report any issues at the time as it could be hard to track it retrospectively

mikej412

I had the same problem in a non-CCNA sim. Then I re-read the instructions and entered the command they wanted to me enter first, before the next command. On a real router the sequence didn't matter, on the SIM it did.

But if you were totally frozen, and couldn't input anything -- that sounds like a test issue. Since you did get the proctor involved -- its worth calling to try to get a free retest out of it.

andymay154

Don't think it was anything to do with the commands that were entered, all I had was a blinking '_' with no 'router#' prompt, couldn't type a thing.

Thanks for the advice, i'll give them a call tomorrow and let you all know how I get on.

Out of interest, taking this into account do you think 809 was a reasonable score?

mikej412

andymay154 wrote:

Out of interest, taking this into account do you think 809 was a reasonable score?

Yeah -- the Sims are a BIG part of your score.

You do get partial credit on sims -- so if you had gotten some commands in before changing screens, you might have gotten some points on that bad sim. That 2nd Sim probably could have put you over the top.... toss in the "fluster factor" for losing exam time....

But now you have the added pressure when you retest -- you probably could have passed this time -- so now we EXPECT you to pass next try.

andymay154

ha ha, just what I need, more pressure! Well I hope I do mike, will let you know!

mikej412

andymay154 wrote:

more pressure!

Oh, and when you talk to them -- not only do you want a free re-test, you don't want to have to wait for the 5 day re-test waiting period!

How's that for even more pressure?

But if you just get the free re-test, that's probably acceptable. You can use the extra study time and your knowledge of the real exam to balance out the trauma of that first attempt and the pressure of our expectations!