90% on Transcender, 70% on MsPress MeasureUp

phoeneous

I've taken both of these tests a few times. The practice exam difficulty is like night and day between the two. I find the Transcender exams quite easy and can pass with a 90+% average. However, with the MeasureUp practice tests on the MS Press books I never seem to get anything over 75%. How should I measure my progress?

I've been working with XP since inception and been a sysadmin for the last 6 years and thought I knew my stuff, guess I was wrong. I guess you get so used to doing things one way and you dont pay attention to the title of the menu screens as you navigate through them e.g. setting up foreign languages or changing advanced options for modems. Who the heck uses modems anymore?? And have you ever actually used RIS in a production environment??

Taking the test on 3/12.

MYSTYKRACER

phoeneous wrote: »

I've taken both of these tests a few times. The practice exam difficulty is like night and day between the two. I find the Transcender exams quite easy and can pass with a 90+% average. However, with the MeasureUp practice tests on the MS Press books I never seem to get anything over 75%. How should I measure my progress?

I've been working with XP since inception and been a sysadmin for the last 6 years and thought I knew my stuff, guess I was wrong. I guess you get so used to doing things one way and you dont pay attention to the title of the menu screens as you navigate through them e.g. setting up foreign languages or changing advanced options for modems. Who the heck uses modems anymore?? And have you ever actually used RIS in a production environment??

Taking the test on 3/12.

Ditto!

http://www.techexams.net/forums/70-270-windows-xp-professional/50831-whats-270-test-really-like.html

Btw, have you gotten to the point where you recognize some of the answers on the Measure Up CD are actually wrong?!

After reading around hear a bit I'm starting to get the distinct impression that the MS Press Measure Up CD is intentionally more difficult than the actual test in order to "prepare you". I've noticed some people come back and say the test was a bit easier than they expected.

Good luck to you and let us know how it goes, I'll be taking the test in Mach too!

Super99

If you're doing good on the Transcender then I'd say you're ready.
Make sure you know the different types of install, know it well.

phoeneous

Super99 wrote: »

If you're doing good on the Transcender then I'd say you're ready.
Make sure you know the different types of install, know it well.

Ugh, I hate install questions. Every place that I have ever worked at has never used sysprep nor RIS. I know where to focus though, installs and share permissions.

Hyper-Me

phoeneous wrote: »

Every place that I have ever worked at has never used sysprep.

Thats a big fail.

Zartanasaurus

phoeneous wrote: »

Ugh, I hate install questions. Every place that I have ever worked at has never used sysprep nor RIS.

Really?

I've never used RIS, but I've used sysprep/ghost and sysprep/WDS. How are your techs re-installing PCs after a crash or nasty virus infection when you can drop an image in 15 minutes instead of doing virus scans for four hours?

phoeneous

Zartanasaurus wrote: »

Really?

I've never used RIS, but I've used sysprep/ghost and sysprep/WDS. How are your techs re-installing PCs after a crash or nasty virus infection when you can drop an image in 15 minutes instead of doing virus scans for four hours?

Ghost. Sysprep isnt needed for that.

phoeneous

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Thats a big fail.

Why fail? The only benefit of using sysprep is the ability to customize attended installs that require user input right? This never really applied to those environments that I worked in so sysprep was never needed. All we did was create a reference pc, ghost it, deploy image, run newsid and rename, join to domain, activate office, done. Simple.

Reseven

Super99 wrote: »

If you're doing good on the Transcender then I'd say you're ready.
Make sure you know the different types of install, know it well.

I have to agree with Super99 here.
You're ready to go!

citinerd

Sysprep does the SID and with an answer file (simple) does not have to have any user interaction....however you can have it prompt for user name (eliminates one reboot). Add to domain reboot and done. However in my org we have a program that gets upgrades like every other day so we run a script to install that prog. YAY HEALTHCARE!!!