Has Prometric done this to anyone else?

schroeds

I took my 70-291 yesterday and right as I submitted my test it crashed. The guy there told me not to sweat it and call today for my scores. I called, and they told me there was some sort of problem and they needed time to firgure out what happened. Now I'm left in limbo for the next 3-5 business days as to whether or not I passed. Needless to say I'm upset, but I'm afraid that they will make me sit through that brutal exam again. I'm pretty sure I passed the first time, and the thought of going through it again is painful.

Anyone else been through this before?

keatron

I've had a similar experience before. And it is quiet frustrating.

But let's play glass half full here for a minute;

If they screwed it up so bad that there's no way to tell your score and they have no way of knowing if you passed or failed, you'll just have to test again (on their dime of course). Since you were confident you passed, that tells me you felt you knew the material well. So, it shouldn't be hard at all to pass if you indeed have to take it again.

Also, if I remember correctly, the couple of times this happened to me, I didn't have to retest. Somehow they were able to get my scores and within a couple of weeks, emailed me a pdf of my score report.

Keep your fingers crossed.

schroeds

Thanks for the confidence boost

And I'm pretty sure I would pass if I had to take it again, I just don't want to sit through it again. That exam was easily the worst of all the ones I've taken thus far (A+ Net+ MCDST and all other MCSA exams).

Slowhand

It happened to my college professor, when he took one of his tests. Hopefully, it won't be the case for you, but when the machine crashed halfway through his test he was in big trouble. They finally rebooted the machine, got the test back, and he could start where he'd left off. Trouble was, he couldn't go back and review the questions he'd already done. When he hit the "Submit" button on the end, it showed that he had an ultra-low score, (somewhere in the 400's), and he was very sure that he wouldn't have scored that low. They just told him that he must have not studied enough, couldn't do anything for him.

He ended up rescheduling the exam with Vue the next day, took the test, and aced it with a score around 890. Given that he'd been teaching Windows networking, as well as working as a consultant for countless companies, for years on end, it wasn't likely that he'd bomb out with a 400. Keep tabs on the Prometric center, make sure they don't just give you the "you must have gotten all of them wrong" answer if your test comes out with only 100 points.

keatron

Slowhand wrote:

It happened to my college professor, when he took one of his tests. Hopefully, it won't be the case for you, but when the machine crashed halfway through his test he was in big trouble. They finally rebooted the machine, got the test back, and he could start where he'd left off. Trouble was, he couldn't go back and review the questions he'd already done. When he hit the "Submit" button on the end, it showed that he had an ultra-low score, (somewhere in the 400's), and he was very sure that he wouldn't have scored that low. They just told him that he must have not studied enough, couldn't do anything for him.

He ended up rescheduling the exam with Vue the next day, took the test, and aced it with a score around 890. Given that he'd been teaching Windows networking, as well as working as a consultant for countless companies, for years on end, it wasn't likely that he'd bomb out with a 400. Keep tabs on the Prometric center, make sure they don't just give you the "you must have gotten all of them wrong" answer if your test comes out with only 100 points.

True. The key is make sure you call them every day.

JDMurray

I've had two different CompTIA exams crash while I was taking them, but the test center attendant was able to restart the test and I finished without any problems. I would assume that if the test were lost there would probably be a problem with the actual test computer. It's easy for the testing software to make incremental backups of the test as its being taken to insure that no data is lost in the event of a crash, but the affects of a disk or hardware failure is difficult to predict.

Plantwiz

I had one exam crash and my test center had no clue what to do. 3 questions wouldn't display the images and they told me if I failed that I'd have to file a protest to have my exam manually scored. The exam then crashed.

I was a little shook during the exam. After a bit more complaining (and fortunately for me the only candidate testing at the time) they finally come into the exam room to look at the problem. The women logged me out and back in and somehow my exam continued at the point where I was....I continued a bit unsure of what would happen and was just happy my score sheet said PASS so I didn't worry about it. (the next two exams I took didn't have this problem).

I knew the material and realized I'd likely just have to retake the exam if the problem wasn't fixed....it's just the frustration of trying to schedule time away from clients (billable hours) that is annoying.

Hoping it all works out for you!! Keep us posted

steve-o87

It hasn't happened to me personally...

But I have seen it happen to a couple of guys about 6 months ago. They went to write their MCSE's and the official answer from the test centre was "Something on the server crashed"!
One of the guys just freaked out at the Prometric Call centre operator, and rightfully so when they told him he wouldn't get a refund. :

Damn Shame - Hopefully they wont make you sit again!

Good luck

blargoe

The most recent exam I took, the 70-296 MCSE upgrade, completely locked up during the survey at the end of the test. The exam had already been graded. The entire exam the test was running unusually slow, taking no less than 8-10 seconds to move between questions and sometimes more.

The thing that sucked was I scheduled a job interview right after the test just KNOWING that there was no way I would be there longer than an hour... I had to leave without my scores and was 7 minutes late to the interview. Still got the job, and yes I passed the exam.

schroeds

So... I have to retake it on Thursday.

I know that this most likely not Prometric's fault, but after the way the handled the issue I doubt I'll ever test with them again.

elover_jm

Yup
half way through my 70-290 exam the server crash..........

after they work on resolving the issues....they told me i had to start over....i almost had a heart attack cause i was like at question 22 when it happened.

however i had no choice so i restarted the test.... funny thing though the first 22 set of quest i did before the server went turned out to be the last 22 quest when i restarted it.