A+ Certified Today!

longhornxp2005

I took both exams today and felt very good about my results even before seeing my score. The test was a bit easier than I anticipated at first. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a cake walk either. I got an 845 on the Essentials exam and an 860 on the Practical Applications exam.

So far I'm Microsoft Office 2007 Master certified and A+ 2009 certified. I'm going to start my Network+ training and after that I'm gearing towards my CCNA. After getting those I need to look around and figure out what specific path I want to pursue. This will decide what other Microsoft/Other certifications I will shoot for.

All in all I'm just very happy to see my hard work pay off so far and am excited to start my Net+ endeavors. For all of you nearing your test dates I wish you all the best of luck. My only advice is to not focus so much on specific details but focus more on understanding how things work. My test was far more about troubleshooting and general technology compared to knowing specific facts. That doesn't mean you don't need to know facts because you will but you won't make or break the test if you don't know them all. I would suggest focusing on RAID types, networking concepts (IP classes, APIPA, commands and switches such as ping, ipconfig and ports such as FTP, SSH, telnet, SMTP, POP3 etc), Restorative commands (fixboot, fixmbr, boot.ini etc) and most of all know your core hardware features including their strengths and weaknesses. Core hardware is CPU, memory, hard drives, video cards, chipsets, expansion buses, USB, Firewire, SCSI, BIOS, CMOS, jumpers etc.

I do believe that most decent educated techs should know most of these by heart and have used them at least a few times. Also remember RDP which is Remote Desktop Protocol and its port number which is port 3389. Beyond that try and stick with your gut and try and avoid second guessing yourself. You must trust that you know your stuff even when you start doubting yourself. Also pay attention to the question and what it's asking of you. It might ask you for the best/quickest solution or what is the next step. These are all fairly common knowledge and present on most practice exams but they deserve to be mentioned again. Also the specific questions on your test could greatly vary from another persons so these are just general area's in which I feel most people can/will struggle with that seem to be a major aspect of the objectives.

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Comments

steve13ad

Good job! It's smart to get it before the end of the year!

I'm trying to get motivated to start studying for it.

earweed

Congrats!!

longhornxp2005

This summer I've taken three of my older computers and installed XP Pro, Vista Business and Win7 Business on the three of them. I've installed Server 2008 R2 on my primary system (dual boot). I'm using some of the Microsoft e-learning courses for installing, configuring and managing Server 2008 R2 so I could get hands on practice with it. I'm looking to setup everything in a normal server/client configuration and also as a domain. I'm going to configure permissions and the like to get a good overview of everything. This will at least be a very good start towards additional Microsoft Server certifications along with solid practical server experience for most companies.

Psoasman

Nice work the passes!

tomahawkeer

Congrats on the pass. Ill be scheduling mine this week sometime.

earweed

longhornxp2005 wrote: »

This summer I've taken three of my older computers and installed XP Pro, Vista Business and Win7 Business on the three of them. I've installed Server 2008 R2 on my primary system (dual boot). I'm using some of the Microsoft e-learning courses for installing, configuring and managing Server 2008 R2 so I could get hands on practice with it. I'm looking to setup everything in a normal server/client configuration and also as a domain. I'm going to configure permissions and the like to get a good overview of everything. This will at least be a very good start towards additional Microsoft Server certifications along with solid practical server experience for most companies.

You're getting a good start there. Make sure you know the differences between regular Server 2008 and server 2008 R2 as the tests are all based on Server 2008. There's a few differences between them.

rogue2shadow

Congrats!!

nicklauscombs

nice work. congrats!