Failed it with a 651 Today *UPDATE PASSED 2nd Attempt: 871*

MCPWannabe

This really, really sucks. I studied hard for the exam, and I still failed with a 651. If I had to say that I had one glaring area of weakness, I would say performance counters. I didn't understand how to evaluate them before the exam and I didn't understand how to do it when I took the exam.

But this one really feels bad. I work one of those IT jobs that won't let you close to a network server without at least the 290, and I'm so tired of having these call-center I.T. jobs where you have to explain the basics of clicking on a mouse.

Anyway, I'm going to probably try again next week.

Edit: oh, I wanted to elucidate some of my mistakes:

1. Study as if you are doing a procedural practice and not theory. I'm fairly competent with school having just finished a Master's degree in Business Administration, and a bachelors degree. With that being said, I approached this exam like I was studying for a college theoretical class, and this was a mistake. This exam was about knowing what to click on what at the appropriate time. There was very little interms of conceptual understanding.



2. At all costs, set up the lab.

Though I've heard of plenty of people who are able to just read a book and understand the exam, I don't see how they do it. The simulations definitely got me.

At all costs, I recommend setting up a lab. I attempted to set up a lab but gave up on the idea when I couldn't get my DHCP and DNS server working. This was a big mistake. I would have saved more time by just learning how to set up a DHCP and DNS server.

3. Read the technotes. I just found them this morning. With that being said, I couldn't believe how accurate they were for the exam. If I had more time to read them, I may have passed. Of the 47 questions that I had, about 21 of them were included in the technotes.

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Someone please tell me where I can learn about performance counters and auditing at!

Essendon

That surely sucks, mate. I took my 290 last week and I can also vouch on performance being tested the heaviest on the test. Give it a thorough read, there were a few performance questions posted on this forum by a few users, including "mariegenia" and me. Read through them, gives you a fair idea where to use alerts/counters/system monitor and task manager. A few friends who have sat this test in the past couple of weeks also said that performance and backup were the most heavily tested.

Brush these up and I am sure you should be good for the test and we would like to see a passing score posted next time. Post up any questions and constructive answers should be forthcoming.

Sie

The main areas to look at are when to use trace logs, counter logs and alerts.

Also what counters are used for and what they measure.

Best of luck next time, you were almost there this time im sure you will be fine next time!

Rikku

Sorry to hear that MCPWan. Chin up though, after that first round, I am sure you will strengthen those weak areas. That hands on in a virtual environment is definetely a plus. I had a bunch of exercises from a book called "MCSE Core Requirements" by Oreilly that have you perform several Administrative Exercises (I.E. Setup an IIS website,Configure Permissions on a share, Setup Performance counters..etc.) I performed those exercises over my VM environment at home and it was great to reference/work with. I have the 290 test myself the day after tommorow. I am brushing up on all the performance counters & logging for reference myself.

MCPWannabe

Thanks for the support guys. I've been browsing this board lately, and it's like a goldmine of information. It would have been nice to have found this resource earlier in my exam preparation.

With that being said, I'm going to work hard to get performance logging down and run some labs.

Backup was tested heavily, but was surprisingly easier than I expected. All of the questions focused, with the exception of 1, on whether a a backup should be incremental, differential, normal, ect..

IIS only had 1 question.. SUS only had two questions.

But performance logging and alerts.. If I ever made a mistake before taking an exam.. I found a thread on this board dealing with performance logging, and I'm checking it out now. Plus, I'm reading the microsoft press book on the revelant chapters.

I'm somewhat fearful about this next test because I've heard that Microsoft makes the second tests significantly more difficult, but I'll take it next week and see what happens.

undomiel

WSUS is what you'll get a thorough testing on in the 291 so here just make sure you understand the basic concepts of it. For this test you're going to want permissions and backups down pat. Also make sure you thoroughly understand information from the 270 because there is a lot of overlap. Basic account administration is necessary as well. Good luck getting your lab going, that will make a huge difference in how prepared you are. Try and get in an hour every day and you should be golden. Don't forget to check out the technotes here for the 270 as well as the 290 since there is a lot of overlap. There is excellent information there on performance monitoring.

Rikku

IIS only had questions, sort of.. SUS only had two questions.

WSUS is what you'll get a thorough testing on in the 291 so here just make sure you understand the basic concepts of it.

Hum. I am confused. I thought they dropped SUS questions on the 290 and replaced them with WSUS. Thats at least what I have listed in my study guides. Supposedly, MS was pulling the SUS questions out of the tests and replace with WSUS around Summer 2006. I guess not...or they decided to leave and just add WSUS to the 291 as undomiel was mentioning there was overlap.

bleScreened

MCPWannabe wrote:

This really, really sucks. I studied hard for the exam, and I still failed with a 651. If I had to say that I had one glaring area of weakness, I would say performance counters. I didn't understand how to evaluate them before the exam and I didn't understand how to do it when I took the exam.

But this one really feels bad. I work one of those IT jobs that won't let you close to a network server without at least the 290, and I'm so tired of having these call-center I.T. jobs where you have to explain the basics of clicking on a mouse.

Anyway, I'm going to probably try again next week.

Edit: oh, I wanted to elucidate some of my mistakes:

1. Study as if you are doing a procedural practice and not theory. I'm fairly competent with school having just finished a Master's degree in Business Administration, and a bachelors degree. With that being said, I approached this exam like I was studying for a college theoretical class, and this was a mistake. This exam was about knowing what to click on what at the appropriate time. There was very little interms of conceptual understanding.



2. At all costs, set up the lab.

Though I've heard of plenty of people who are able to just read a book and understand the exam, I don't see how they do it. The simulations definitely got me.

At all costs, I recommend setting up a lab. I attempted to set up a lab but gave up on the idea when I couldn't get my DHCP and DNS server working. This was a big mistake. I would have saved more time by just learning how to set up a DHCP and DNS server.

3. Read the technotes. I just found them this morning. With that being said, I couldn't believe how accurate they were for the exam. If I had more time to read them, I may have passed. Of the 47 questions that I had, about 21 of them were included in the technotes.

---

Someone please tell me where I can learn about performance counters and auditing at!

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. Have your tried setting a lab up with MS Virtual PC? It's a free software and all you need is one of those 180 day trial licenses for MS server 2003 and an XP cd. You can setup each virtual 2003 server to have its network adapter set to a "local" network. I have done this plenty of times and have had no problems getting DHCP and DNS working between my virtual machines. And what's best is that you can have 6 computers running at the same time on your one home PC and they all act as their own entity. It is awesome for testing GPOs and domain setups.

Essendon

Rikku wrote:

IIS only had questions, sort of.. SUS only had two questions.

WSUS is what you'll get a thorough testing on in the 291 so here just make sure you understand the basic concepts of it.

Hum. I am confused. I thought they dropped SUS questions on the 290 and replaced them with WSUS. Thats at least what I have listed in my study guides. Supposedly, MS was pulling the SUS questions out of the tests and replace with WSUS around Summer 2006. I guess not...or they decided to leave and just add WSUS to the 291 as undomiel was mentioning there was overlap.

From my test, they merely replaced the word SUS with the word WSUS. The questions were such that it didnt matter whether it was SUS or WSUS. So as long as you have a basic idea of what happens in the update services, you should be good.

For my preparation, I made sure I knew the following things well :

1. if it's stated that the clients must obtain the updates from the SUS server, put in the name of the SUS server.
2. check that the clients have the automatic updates client installed on them.
3. check for the scheduling that the clients have configured on them i.e. download and install, download and notify and the like.

This sufficed for me, probably should for you too.

As undomiel said, WSUS would be well tested on 291, not on this one.

MCPWannabe

I just wanted to thank everyone here. ccaltac, I finally got my lab setup by setting both properties to local. I followed a real simple online tutorial on setting up a DHCP and DNS server, and I got to do my first real exercises. I am very excited.

Undomiel, thank you for that tip on the 270. I didn't realize how much of that exam was covered for this one. I read the tech notes for the performance alert section and finally understood it! If only, I'd have done that before I took the exam.

Rikku, there wasn't much on WSUS. I can't wait to hear of your passing score.

hmmmm.. I get to take my next test on June 17th. It was the earliest that I could take off work. I'll keep everyone posted as I work hard to pass this exam.

Rikku

Hey MCPWan,

Well, guess what. No passing score for me. I took the test today and also failed with a 651.

I consider myself an competent Admin who has been working with networks from small companies to fortune 500 orgs since the Windows 3.1 days.

Still, I did not pass this exam ....and I am not sure where my weak point is, except maybe in the interpretation of the questions and maybe the new SIMS. For example in the SIM, you can only click a few places to accomplish the task that you are recommended to perform. However, most admins know several ways to complete the same task (and verify it was done properly). So, at that point I am left to guess what it was that I actually missed. All my scores were pretty close down the middle in all of the areas.

I'm actually not all that really bothered with this outcome. I will schedule it in another few weeks and go for it again. I bet my next attempt should do it. Odd thing is, the previous MS test I took (270) I did not study much for..read one book briefly and saw about 10 questions I could not answer without guessing and passed just fine. Go figure.

Back to studying. Good Luck on your next attempt!

bojo387

I think the lab is what made it for me guys. I had a hard time interpreting the "super-long" questions but the practice lab helped in that aspect believe it or not.

I hope you get it the next time. Don't lose hope.

MCPWannabe

I just wanted to come on and say thanks to everyone. I'm retaking the exam on Tuesday, and I'm very nervous. I'm quite certain that I would pass the original version of the exam that I took if I had to do it over again. As far as the second, presumably more difficult, retake -- we'll just have to wait and see. Rikku, we'll both get there. Thanks everyone again.

Mishra

Good luck!

Rikku

Don't be nervous MCPWan, you'll do fine. Just take your time and read the questions carefully. Alot of times, the question descriptions give key clues on what answers you can through out the window and narrow your chances.

Good Luck Man!

-Rikku

MCPWannabe

Well, it's my turn to rejoice in a passed score. I got a 871 on the retake today. It is a vey elating feeling. What's most important, I think, is that I figured out what works for me on studying for these Microsoft exams. I'll start getting ready for the 291 on Saturday. Until then, I'm going to take a break. Thanks to everyone on this board for providing great information and great advice.

nicklauscombs

Congrats!

astorrs

Nicely done.

bwcarty

Congrats!

Does this mean you'll be changing your screenname since you now have your MCP?

aordal

Congrats!
Hopefully I can say the same thing Thursday next week.

NetAdmin2436

MCPWannabe wrote:

Well, it's my turn to rejoice in a passed score. I got a 871 on the retake today. It is a vey elating feeling. What's most important, I think, is that I figured out what works for me on studying for these Microsoft exams. I'll start getting ready for the 291 on Saturday. Until then, I'm going to take a break. Thanks to everyone on this board for providing great information and great advice.

Sweet! Your now a MCP and no longer just a wannabe!

Does this mean your gonna change your name?....maybe to 'MCSAwannabe'?