Microsoft's commonsense tips

Obdurate

I decided I want to get more involved with this online community; so as I sit here and read Microsoft's XP Professional Training Kit, I might as well post their "exam tips".

My goal is to post once a day until I pass this 270 exam -- hopefully I will pass the first time.

Oh, I will be changing the actual wording of the tips, just in case.

My first one I took into consideration the average IQ of Congress, plus the cost of tea at Walmart, divided by the amount of rocks on the local beach. This in turn gave me a page number of 10-5.

Exam Tip:

Windows XP DOES NOT support fault-tolerant disks!
Spanned and Stripped -- nothing else
Spanned fills one HD before moving onto fill the next HD. Stripped fills a set amount in each HD; the advantage of Stripped is speed.

~Obdurate~

CompuTron99

Obdurate wrote: »

Exam Tip:

Windows XP DOES NOT support fault-tolerant disks!
Spanned and Stripped -- nothing else
Spanned fills one HD before moving onto fill the next HD. Stripped fills a set amount in each HD; the advantage of Stripped is speed.

~Obdurate~

That's Funny I'm actually reading that chapter right now!

Obdurate

Not so much as an Exam Tip, but an interesting note:

In previous versions of Windows a "printer" was the software on the computer and a "print device" was the actual hardware.

In Windows XP, the terminology has changed -- a "printer" puts texts or images on paper (or other print media) and a "logical printer" is the collection of software that interface between the OS and the printer.

I believe that the notation about printers on this website still defines the printers the old Windows way; so I am keeping both definitions in mind.

~Obdurate~

Hyper-Me

"He who stands on toilet, is high on pot"


No seriously....my 70-270 tip would be "Don't punch the screen when you hit the RIS questions and realize youve never used, nor ever will use, RIS."

Piers

stripped

Obdurate

Piers wrote: »

stripped

A Freudian slip on my part?

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

From the Windows Training Kit:

RIS requires Active Directory so the RIS clients can locate the RIS server. Active Directory needs DNS.
DHCP is also required so the RIS clients can get an IP address.

My notes:

I remember what RIS needs by saying Dee Dee Ah Dee or D.D.AD which as you have already guessed stands for DNS, DHCP and Active Director. It is goofy to say out loud but easy to remember because of it.

According to one of the exam testing software I am using, if there is no DHCP on the network, the RIS server can act as a DHCP (for the purpose of giving the clients an IP address) as long as the RIS server is authorized in Active Directory.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Happy Friday!

The word namespace at its simplest is a structure (often a database) in which all objects are named simiarly but are still uniquely identified.

An example could be:

TechExams.net
|
|
div1.techexams.net
|
|
dept1.div1.techexams.net

and so on

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Exam Tip on managing data storage:

When you convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk, data on the disk is preserved. When you revert a dynamic disk to a basic disk all the data is lost.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Good morning all,


A basic exam tip:

Compressed files can NOT be encrypted, and encrypted files can not be compressed with NTFS compression.

~Obdurate~

PS In case you all forgot the Jets are playing at 1 PM

Obdurate

According to Microsoft's Training Kit book:

Exam Tip: Know where the Windows Firewall log files are stored, whether logging is available and what kind of information you can learn from these files.

Nudge -- %systemroot%/pfirewall.log

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Microsoft tip:

Remember the IP address range and what class they fall into, plus the default subnet mask.

Notes:

Class A: 1 - 26 with a subnet mask of 255.0.0.0

Class B: 128 - 191 with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0

Class C: 192 - 233 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0

~Obdurate~

CompuTron99

I think you mean...

Class A: 1 - 126

Obdurate

CompuTron99 wrote: »

I think you mean...

Class A: 1 - 126

Er... Uhm... I was testing everyone?

You are correct!

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Exam tip about wireless:

There are two modes in which you can configure a wireless client:

Ad-hoc, in which there is no Access Point and infrastructure mode, in which an AP is used.

Ad-hoc is sometimes used in small workgroups; while infrastructure mode provides greater security and configurability and is the most common mode for wireless networking.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

This exam tip I see a lot in the test questions:

Exam Tip -- You should consider rolling back a driver when you are sure that the new driver is causing a problem and you do not want to affect other system cofigurations with System Restore.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

This exam tip helped prove yesterday that my work DHCP server was not working properly

If you are troubleshooting a network problem and the workstation has an IP address of 169.258.x.x, the workstation assigned that IP address to itself because the workstation could not find the DHCP server.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

This tip is particularly common in very large domains with a lot of turnovers (i.e. a school district):

Tip: You can not assign anyone ownership of a file or folder. The owner of a file, an Admin, or anyone else with Full Control can assign the "Take Ownership" permission to a user account or group, allowing them to take ownership.

To become the owner of a file or folder, the user or group that has the Take Ownership permission must explicitly take ownership of the file or folder.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Morning All,

Microsoft Exam Tip:

The Setup Security template (setup security.inf) defines the default level of security applied to all new installations of XP Pro on an NTFS partition. This template is good for resetting security levels back to their defaults.

~Obdurate~

PS The Jets are on at 4:15

Obdurate

A quick exam tip:

Consider regional settings as a possibility when keyboard errors are reported or when user report that symbols do not look correct.

Had this happen in real life.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Microsoft's exam tip:

Be aware of the actions that happen when you repair a network connection. Know that repairing a connection (or using ipconfig /renew at the command prompt) forces the computer to release its current IP address and attempt to renew its lease with a DHCP server.

I just did this yesterday at my job -- the boss played with the DHCP server and proceeded to give me a big "fix it" headache -- several computers had to be forced to recognize the DHCP server and one of the comptuers I used /release and /renew.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Members of the Domain Admin or Server Operators domain groups can cuse computer management to monitor any computer that is a member of the domain. Members of the Administrators or Power Users group can monitor a local computer, whether that computer in in a workgroup or domain.

My notes: Computer Management (right click my computer -- manage); right click "Computer Management (local)" and either put the commputer name in or browse for it.

Personally I use Dameware at work to do the same thing.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Happy Turkeyday!

Microsoft's exam tip -- Separator pages identify and separate print jobs (never used them at work, ever); XP includes four separator pages: sysprint.sep, pcl.sep, pscript.sep and sysprtj.sep

The last one (sysprtj.sep) is for Japanese.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Windows XP Pro can support up to 10 simultaneous network connections (easy enough to remember).

And this one I found odd since I don't use Macintosh:

Clients using newer Macintosh Operating systems can communicate directly with MS clients by using special built-in file and print services named Samba.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Exam Tip:

Remember the actions you can have Windows take should a service fail:

Take No Action
Restart the Service
Run A Program
Restart The Computer

Typically, you should have Windows attempt to restart the service on the first or second failure.

You should have Windows attempt to restart only when the service that fails is vital to the computer's role and when restarting will not interfere with the desktop environment.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Straight up memorization here:

Remember the counters that are available for System Monitoring, in particular:

Pages/sec -- this is the number of pages that were either read from disk or written to disk to make room in physical memory for other pages. This counter is the primary indicator of whether the computer has insufficient memory. Anything over 20 is bad. (I like to picture carrying 20 pages of paper, the 21st page falls to the ground. The stranger the easier to remember)

Avg. Disk Queue Length -- this indicates the average number of both read and write requests that are queued for the selected disk; if this value is above a 2, the disk is the bottle neck.

and finally %Processor Time -- which is basically what is means; this counter indicates the percentage of time the processor spends executing a non-idle thread. Sustained values over 80 is bad. (this one I imagine hold 80 processors in my hand, a wobbly stack reaching up to touch the ceiling.)

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Not so much a tip, as a quick answer to "Why can't I connect remotely!?"

If you have a firewall installed, open TCP port 3389 to support Remote Desktop connections.

Had this happen at work, using Dameware (but Dameware uses a different port).

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Microsoft Exam Tip:

A domain does NOT recognize local user accounts, do do not create local user accounts on computers running XP Pro that are part of a domain. Doing so restricts users from accessing resources on the domain and prevents admins from assigning access permissions for domain resources.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Not so much a MS exam tip but something I keep seeing in the practice exam questions:

The File Signature Verification utility (otherwise known as Sigverif.exe) in Windows scans a computer running XP and notifies you if there are any unsigned drivers on the computer.

The File Signature Verification utility also writes the results of the scan to a log file called Segverif.txt (notice the different spelling), which is found in the %systemroot% folder.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Obdurate wrote: »

Not so much a MS exam tip but something I keep seeing in the practice exam questions:

The File Signature Verification utility (otherwise known as Sigverif.exe) in Windows scans a computer running XP and notifies you if there are any unsigned drivers on the computer.

The File Signature Verification utility also writes the results of the scan to a log file called Segverif.txt (notice the different spelling), which is found in the %systemroot% folder.

~Obdurate~

Never to take anything for granted when working with Microsoft I just tested Sigverif.exe; it starts with a mini-wizard and an Advance button. When you click the Advance button you get two tabs: Search and Logging. It is on the Logging Tab that I see an error in the Windows XP Professional Training Kit -- the file I mentioned above (Segverif.txt) is spelled wrong in the book.

The actual name is Sigverif.txt

I don't know who is worse me for trusting the MS book or the original proof-readers who did not double check the written answers.

~Obdurate~

Obdurate

Printers:

The Print permission offers the fewest rights, basically allowing users to print to the printer and manage their own documents.

The Manage Documents permission allows gives you all the rights of the Print permissions plus the ability to manage other user's documents (if you have ever deleted someone else's print job that is stuck in queue, you have Manage Documents permission).

The Manage Printers permission includes all rights offered by Manage Documents plus allows you to configure printer settings; and let me add that you need Manage Printer permissions to share a printer, delete a printer, and change print permissions.

~Obdurate~