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.