Well, that was a horrible experience and I can understand completely why it's easy to fail it. The exam was much tougher than I expected and it was all over the place with topics coming from all angles. My overall experience was just like
Mishra and
Snadam said in previous posts about the 293.
I passed with a very good score as it turns out though I never felt very confident all the way through, and having a cold (read-'man flu'
) didn't help. I think I got by on experience, knowing which answers were clearly wrong, being full of painkillers helped to numb the horror of the exam and with a significant portion of luck to be frightfully honest. I think the numerous sims saved me - thank heavens for the amount of lab work and testing I did as I flew through the ones I got. Took me two and a half hours which is by far the longest I've ever spent in a MS exam.
I used MS Press book (very poor), read some of the chapters in the Syngress book to help (good), and CBT Nuggets (good) plus the usual VM labs to break/fix different scenarios. Thanks to everyone who has previously posted in the forum, theres some very good information and experiences in there. You all rule
I'm just glad to have got that one out of the way and I'm relieved I did it within two months of passing the 291 as there is a lot of overlap in the subject matter. 293 is harder though in my opinion as it covers just about everything within Windows 2003 and then some!
Two left for the MCSE now, and I'm definately feeling happier about being closer to the finishing line. Gonna spend a couple of days going over a few bits and pieces again from the 293 first before moving on to 294 & 298.
The worst thing is, I can't have a celebratory beer tonight due to the paracetamol, D'oh
