Strike 3

jmritenour

So I failed 70-293 again for the 3rd time yesterday. I've never been more pissed off, frustrated or confused in my life. I genuinely feel like I know the material pretty well. I've used 4 different books as a study source, CTBs, and I have labbed the hell out of clustering and PKI.

Yet I keep failing, and miserable fails at that - I have yet to break 600. I've NEVER had any trouble with any MS test before, but I seriously don't know where I'm going wrong.

I keep getting the same sims more or less every time, and I'm starting to wonder if I'm not whiffing on them big time. They seem so simplistic, most of them I look them over repeatedly, and it looks as thought clicking one check box will accomplish the goal of the sim.

What's more, every score report I've gotten has been all over the place, so I don't know where I'm falling short. One said I need to improve on planning network security, another had me nearly maxed out in that. The first time I took it, I had around 80% or so in server availability, and the next two, that's been way low.

I'm not making excuses, but I've got an hour and half commute to work that sucks up a bunch of time I could be studying, along with a new baby, and on top of that I started my first term at WGU last month. It's HARD for me to find good, quality study time. This is the first time in my IT career I've considered giving up on a cert, but I'm just about there.

Does anyone have any tips or advice? I'm truly at a loss here. I really want to be an MCSE before the title is retired, but I'm tired of beating my head against a wall. And I'm bored as hell with this particular exam and it's contents. You can only do so much to make RRAS interesting.

Jarhead2011

I know how you feel, I also failed it last week for second time, and I don't know where I am going wrong. I also wanted to skip this cert, but I've come too far to give up. I don't really know what to do differently for the next time, I rescheduled for over 3 weeks.

So unfortunately I'm in the same boat as you, I have found some info on the technet sites after the first exam aswers to some of the question on CA I didn't know, but my second attempt had 0 questions on Certificates and just PKI, whole lot of SMB and IPSec with NT4.0 workstations and 3 windows 7 questions, then Sec templates and policies, RRAS.

apoole15

And here I thought I was the only one... I failed for the 3rd time last Friday and it's getting difficult to be motivated enough to read the same material over again.

I've been fuming over it all week-end. First, I was supposed to take the test on 04/22. I get there, ready, confident and after I entered my answer for the 3rd question - BOOM, system crashes. I sit around for an hour and a half before they finally tell me they will have to reschedule me.

Ok... contact Prometric, have the exam rescheduled for 04/29. Get to the testing facility, start going through the survey, click START to start the exam and BOOM, system crashes. An hour later they get it back up and running and I am able to take the exam.

Now, by this time, I'm pretty ticked. I had another appointment I had to get to and since the offer to reschedule wasn't presented, I start rushing through the exam. About halfway through I'm finally focused again, feeling confident, etc. Hit the completed button and get the dreaded "Sorry, you did not pass"... my score - 680! Basically 1 question away from passing.

I'm sure it was due to not reading a question right at the beginning of the test since I was still pretty ticked at that time and because I was pressed for time I didn't do a review.

So, now I have to wait 2 weeks to make a fourth attempt. I went to schedule it this morning and it appears that my 2nd shot voucher did not carry over. I believe this is due to the fact that when I went in on 04/22 and Prometric had to reschedule me for 04/29. So now I get to call them and put up a fight for my 2nd shot...

Anyway, sorry you didn't pass the exam... thanks for letting me vent and letting me know I'm not the only one frustrated with the 293. Just keep thinking how good it will feel when we finally beat this thing!

MickQ

Damn, that's really annoying. Nothing like going in pumped and ready for the exam, only to have it fail in your face and throw you off.

jmritenour, don't worry too much about it. Loads of people have had it happen to them too. If the exams were easy, there would be a lot more MCSEs around. One guy down the road from me had to sit it several times before he got it. You're not alone.

walterzenga

This is one tough exam, I finally passed today but multiple failures (5 fails I think!) have lead me to these conclusions and finally success -


1. The MS Press Book is inadequate for WSUS - refer to CBT Nuggets for a better overview and to guides for deployment of WSUS in a Win2k3 environment on the Microsoft website
2. TestOut is really good for sims but again poor on WSUS. It also doesn't cover subnetting, Network Monitor,System Monitor or Services well enough. Where it excels is DNS, DHCP, IPSec and RRAS
3. There are so many questions related to commands (and their switches) in this exam you should know every last one of them - I would suggest making your own glossary of all of them like I did!
4. Make sure you have the right edition of the MS Press Book! Its currently 2nd edition, you might have the first, which misses even more of the curriculum
5. CBT Nuggets are a must

DOS

This exam was stressful to me too. I sat down to take it and everything was fine, I was pumped up on caffeine and my mind was crammed full of 293 info....all of a sudden the computer stopped
After almost a 2 hour wait I was able to restart...luckily I passed.

Keep at it OP, you can do it!