Advice for hardware test takers

ssides

I've been reading the posts on this forum for the last 2 weeks and I've found it to be helpful and interesting. The practice exams were extremely helpful. I passed the hardware test on Wednesday with a score of 686. My test was very technical and tough. You could not pass it by doing practice exams and I'm glad I didn't rely solely on them to pass it.

My best advice for either test is to download the objectives and cover them one by one. There are alot of good websites out there with some great information, but there are also many that offer free practice exams that have incorrect information in them. I would recommend that you go to CompTIA's site and use the vendors listed under training providers fsuch as Thompson Course Technology or PrepLogic. I found free exams out there from Preplogic that were very helpful and technical.

I have been rebuilding, configuring, networking, and troubleshooting pcs for the last 8 years (since Windows 3.1) and do these tasks daily at work, but I still went over the objectives and refreshed my memory especially on some of the older technologies.

Good luck to everyone and I hope this helps give you a direction for study.

wwpranma

Finally, someone that can confirm my point all along. I hope that the publishers of the exam cram quiz's are reading this!

blackmage439

ssides wrote:

My best advice for either test is to download the objectives and cover them one by one.

I agree whole-heartedly. Unlike your exam, mine was centered quite a bit around customer service issues. While in the realm of common sense, these questions still required some careful thinking and consideration of what was best for the customer, usually from a technical standpoint.

The best answer to the question "what should I study for the exams?" is: the CompTIA Objectives. I actually never looked at those objectives, because my books mapped the chapters exactly to the objectives. They were very well written, in my opinion.

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Hardware-Managing-Maintaining-Troubleshooting/dp/0619217626/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-3981842-7334262?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179589958&sr=1-1

and

http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Software-Managing-Maintaining-Troubleshooting/dp/061921760X/ref=pd_sim_b_1/103-3981842-7334262?ie=UTF8&qid=1179590124&sr=1-1

(These are the 4th edition books that map to the 2006 objectives; I used the 3rd edition books that map to the 2003 exam, because I had them leftover from the courses I took in college...)