What is the hardest topic of o/s exam to study?

bellboy

getting my head around the concept of conventional, extended, expanded memory and himem was something i found confusing.

this poll will give us an idea of the kinds of articles you want to see in this forum.

DCbird

I'm pretty good at learning practical stuff, but the parts about sectors, bytes and clusters:

Please tell me I don't need to calculate the sectors per clusters or the bytes per clusters or anything like that on the exam.

I love the site, please add more A+ questions.

Thanks

bellboy

it's unlikely that you will be expected to do calculations in the exam relating to sectors and clusters, et al.

i should have a short guide to the topic posted here by the 25th say. it is a topic that i found daunting at first.

if you have studied well, you will find the a+ exams to be a breeze.

Legacy User

I found the Windows 2000 networking side of it a bit hairy, DNS, WINS, tracert, especially the questions that ask you how you do you get to a particular setting or folder etc.

bellboy

i will try to write four articles a week. i will mainly be concentrating on the o/s objectives as they seem to be the hardest for most people - myself included.

Kathy

bellboy wrote:

getting my head around the concept of conventional, extended, expanded memory and himem was something i found confusing.

This is what I find confusing as well.

Another thing I find confusing is the Networking part and getting around to certain folders etc....TRACERT, PING, DNS, blah, blah, blah

Legacy User

bellboy wrote:

i will try to write four articles a week. i will mainly be concentrating on the o/s objectives as they seem to be the hardest for most people - myself included.

Legacy User

I'm having the most trouble with . . . Where do you go to find this is DOS? Windows 9x? Win NT/2000? eg.. "How do you find the OS version?"
Well, you can type VER from a command prompt, or you can go to Programs-Accessories-System Tools-System Information, and there's still other ways, but you have to know most if not all of the different ways!

Hey, I like this site, its been helping me with my studying.
ez

rivergal

Well, i just got back from failing the OS exam. 509. alot of the questions i hadn't even heard of and i've taken courses, online practice and read every note (i thought) would help. i'm discouraged right now, but will go back and try again. maybe a different book would help. i used the Osborne A+ Certification Study Guide . any suggestions for a supplemental read? there were many things not even covered in this one that were quite prevalent on the exam.

RussS

Sad to hear that you missed
Osborne publishes a few different study guides - was it the red & blue one or the Mike Meyers All In One? It also depends on which edition you had. I used Mikes 3rd edition and was able to pass easily as there were only a few diferences in the objectives, however I would recommend the 4th edition to anyone about to purchase one.

rivergal

it was the red/blue one (4th edition). i think i'll get the meyers one. thanks.

Webmaster

Sorry to hear that too...

Any specific topics that gave you hard time?

Ezra

I too would recommend Mike Myers' book. Also, as a suggestion from bellboy, I studied Comptia's objectives and used exam essentials. Knock 'em dead on your next try.

rivergal

There seemed to be alot of DOS commands that weren't covered in the reading i had done. also, lots of NT specific questions (also, minimally covered). I'll go back & try again after the holidays... i'm determined.

thanks for your support!

Webmaster

Well, coincidentaly I'm rounding up a TechNotes on the command prompt procedures as CompTIA lists them in the exam objectives:

Command Prompt Procedures

Just needs two more commands, format and xcopy which I will add very soon.

I hope this helps!

Johan

Kittyfresita

Since in the beginning of my career I used Macintosh and then made the transition to Win 95 I had little experience with DOS, obiously the hardest part for me was understanding DOS commands and especially memory management, when preparing for A+ I often got confused with conventional memory, high memory, etc. Luckily when I took the OS exam last Friday I didn't get questions about DOS memory management. I've got few questions regarding Win 2K and Win 9x and something about config.sys.
The Hardware exam was easy but the laser printing process is a sure thing on the exam, so be prepared to get questions related to laser printers.

yanqui

bellboy wrote:

getting my head around the concept of conventional, extended, expanded memory and himem was something i found confusing.

I had trouble getting this too, but I kept reading and looking at graphical representations of memory and all of a sudden it just crashed into place. Also, I had trouble keeping Himem.sys and emm386.exe straight. I couldn't get the difference between extended and expanded memory. I wrote the definitions down, drew pictures, looked at pictures, and finally when I got into loading drivers and files from config.sys and autoexec.bat it finally got there. Remember that you have to enable extended memory before you can use expanded memory paging--that makes sense if you understand the difference between the two, because expanded memory uses the space in extended memory to page the data, and if your lines in config.sys are switched, it won't load.

The_Network_Engineer

Ah I see probrlay the most diffcult part would be memory to but Windows XP and such use a Flat model for memory and dependiecy on DOS has been on the decline. I expect it to decline alot more to and all. There is always a use for DOS but it wont be used to much inless in a Enumlated window verison from the operating system/s point to run network commands etc.

so yea

airmaster39

I passed both the core and the OS on the first try. The core was ok I had questions I had not seen before I felt nerves. Now with the the OS WOW I was having a panic attack! I was nerves my hands were clammy,swatting my chest was pounding. questions I knew I had not seen before. I would have bet my life on I failed about died when it said I passed! I went out to the car and sat for ten minutes. I still can not remember one single question I was asked. LOL I think networking but I really can remember I walked out and my mind was blank!

Air

chuckster

Actually it is a toss up for me as to which is harder to memorize between networking and printers which wasn't on the poll but should have been in my case at least since I don't get much hands on with either and should make the test intersting for me but according to my test engines I'm starting to commit these subjects to memory. That and the i/o address table which is info I'll be glad to pull form the books when needed after the test is over and leave the old brain for more repair and building specs. info. Should I get that far.
chuckster

modock

the hardest question i had was something to the effect of what is the third file to load in the boot sequence on windows 2000...... to this day i have no clue but i passed by like 300 points no friggin clue how that happened

voldar

The hardest thing?
The fact that you don't know if all the 80 questions count or not. The fact that, when I passed my exam (today ) I was aware of 7 answers with a "doubt", but still, the final score did not show that. Anyway, I passed.
The hardest thing, I imagine is the fact that for a "non english speaker" as myself, questions have a tricky topic.
For the rest, it's not hard if you really used the OSs. but this is only my opinion, and I passed A+ after some other certs, so .. I am not a good example here.

chuckster

For me the hardest part to get the hang of is networking because of my lack of hands on experience which is always my best teacher. So it is all memory work for me which is the most time entensive part of studing for me. It is hard to replace hands on but I do what I can.
TKH
chuckster

bwolfe

Sectors, byte, clusters... not because it's hard. Because it's so darned boring!

nathanamthor

Dealing with NT in general is hard for me, since I've always relied heavily on Safe Mode and Device Manager for repair, and have never used NT at all since it is obsolete. I think the best thing to do is to obtain a copy of each OS and play around with it. I found NT WS 4.0 on ebay for 10 bucks. Hopefully they don't test on the server edition, Groth says they don't but I don't trust him anymore.

mistervince

A lot of real choosy stuff on this exam. But, the config stuff like ntldr and stuff were a bit annoying.

raied

Having to now how to configure settings (TCP\IP) for each OS

jedi_master_tech

Yes TCP/IP settings was a pain,

but remembering the utilities and how to get to them in each OS was a pain to study.

It does not take you long to figure out where something is anyway.

I actually found remembering things like, protocols eg WINS, DNS, TCP/IP, TELNET etc, easy because I had to do a network test with my course prior to doing the A+.

All that stuff was so drummed into me I didnt even bother studying the Network chapter in Mike Meyers book.

Also the memory management thingy, I had my ways of remembering and I even made up a diagram of what controlled what and ran in each memor area.

But for full understanding memory management, I question even a supertech full understanding it. I found it a waste of time and really only memorised it.

But the NT files I RECOMMEND KNOWING THESE, I got about 4 or 5 questions on this. I got 3 questions driver signing, the default setting, where do you change it and what they were.

But an earlier post pointed this out. If you study hard the A+ exams are easy.

But pushing that submit button took a lot of will power, letting the clock run down (I had 40 secs left) or just clicking submit. It was crazy.
You get such a thrill when you see those words congratulations!!!

IM LOOKING FORWARD TO MY NEW AS A PC TECHNICIAN AND NERD!

mattozan

I just took the exam, and I had questions on both the minimum system requirements for Win2k and the recommended system requirements for WinXP!

Memorizing both the minimum AND recommended requirements for all those Windows OSes is a pain. I honestly skipped it, because I thought they would not be so nitpicky. But they were... The choices did not make the answer obvious, either. They were all very close in spec, differing only slightly by RAM or HDD space or CPU speed. They expected me to know the exact specs!

Flangebender

I just took the os exam, and although I passed I was surprised by the number of NT and 2000 questions, very few XP. The networking settings for each os are difficult for me as I only have experience of Me and XP and no practical networking experience at all. As far as texts are concerned I would recommend the Meyers 'All in 1 A+', well set out, though a bit intimidating at 1200 pages!

obeed

definitely "Booting, fat, mbr, config.sys, autoexec.bat"