Starting my career!

lostnoob

Hey guys!

I am just now starting my career as an IT consultant, and the first task my boss has set me to do (outside of work hours, of course) is to get ready to do the 70-680 exam.

I have alot of experience with Windows XP and Windows 7 in general, but not really in the "buisness" portion of the whole thing, so I am sort of starting out, like my nickname states, a lost noob.

I see the well-put together resource list by Claymoore, and it certainly will be helpful in my probably futile attempt to pass this by the end of January.

I will be working at a service desk in a big company the coming months, they are one of the biggest in their buisness in the country, and it is just me, and two more experienced guys working the contract.
Hopefully I will be able to not make a complete fool of myself or the company I work for, but that means that I have to get on top of the 70-680 QUICKLY.

Are there anything you think that I should study first, just to be able to keep up with the two others in my team? I dont want a multi-million deal falling on it's be-hind due to my relative incompetance at the moment.

We are talking about pretty "basic" stuff, however I am not familiar with everything like Imaging, Migration and Networking etc. etc.

Any good advice on how to proceed with the exam preparation whilst also keeping up with the others will be met with a great big round of applause!

Psoasman

I would set up a lab for this exam. I am using Windows virtual PC now. It works well for lab practice. If you get the MS 680 book, make sure to check out the errata threads, as they are embarrassingly long. you can also get Darril's book for the 686/686, as this has filled in some blanks for me.

earweed

Psoasman wrote: »

I would set up a lab for this exam. I am using Windows virtual PC now. It works well for lab practice. If you get the MS 680 book, make sure to check out the errata threads, as they are embarrassingly long. you can also get Darril's book for the 686/686, as this has filled in some blanks for me.

^^ what he said +1. The erratra links are in the thread for 680 resources. The book he mentions Amazon.com: Windows 7 Desktop Support and Administration: Real World Skills for MCITP Certification and Beyond (Exams 70-685 and 70-686) (9780470597095): Darril Gibson: Books will be very helpful especially with the deployment. Good luck in your studies and your new job.

gandalph

as previously stated defo set up a lab and practice as much as time permits,work through the deployment and image capture and ensure you are aware of the tools that you would use e.g DISM
As a side note Virtual PC does not support 64 bit guest OS's so if you want to work with Windows Server 2008 R2 you may want to consider something like VMWare

lostnoob

Thanks for the tips, on tuesday I'm going to be deploying images to 150 computers, and this will be my first time EVER dealing with anything like that. Hopefully after doing that I will have a much broader understanding for what the 70-680 book is trying to tell me

NOLAJ

Cool, hands on experience is definitely the best way to help grasp. Let us know how it turns out.

lostnoob

NOLAJ wrote: »

Cool, hands on experience is definitely the best way to help grasp. Let us know how it turns out.

Thankfully it went great, took me three workdays to get them all done though, as I could only run 15 computers at one time. At least now I understand the deployment part, still need to do the capturing though, didnt get to do that, as the image was already uploaded to server