A+ Class

Daniel333

All,

I've been asked to help teach an A+ certification class at a local library in October.

I am looking for some example crashing app for people to troubleshoot. Are there any dummy apps you might use for troubleshooting? I am thinking I might have to hack these out in Visual Basic myself....

here is what I think I need
1) An app the launches, waits a few seconds and exits if it's not on Windows XP (so they can use compatibility options)
2) An app that won't work in anything more than 256 colors
3) An app that goes immediately to "not responding"

Additionally if anyone has some recommendations on what they would expect to see in an A+ bootcamp. (mind you budget is very limited)

Asif Dasl

I can't find it now but I think James Conrad used something called appcrash or appcrash32 in one of his videos (a long time ago!) but Citrix have somthing which tests Windows Error Reporting if that's any use to you. As for the bootcamp - you'd need access to a few PCs you can look at and troubleshoot basic stuff like loose RAM unplugged sata cable, test motherboard beep codes etc simple stuff.

EDIT - I found something similar called badapp which should do the job for you.

Plantwiz

Certainly you have some old W95 or W98 games or such lying about that you could load or have then load

Badapp was ok, used it a time or two several years back, just became unnecessary to run those tests and hadn't stayed current with it. Might just do the trick for you in this situation.

Daniel333

Thanks, Ill check those out.

Any recommendations on the class? I am a few years out on desktop support. But going through the A+ materials it seems things havn't changed much. Input? Ideas? Looks like I'll have 4x 8 hour sessions. S

Darril

"4x 8 hour sessions." I'm not exactly sure what that means, but you might have some challenges with time.

I've taught many A+ classes and when it's taught in day long sessions, I've taught it in 10 days - Monday through Friday two weeks in a row, at about 7 to 8 hours each day for a total of about 70-80 hours. When taught in a college environment, it's about 4 hours twice a week for 16 sessions (about 64 hours).

Some training institutions have taught A+ in a single week, but students often walk away dizzy without retaining much knowledge.