Passed 70-680!!

I am typically a lurker but the material, experiences, recommendations for books and labs on this forum have been immensely helpful in not only learning the material up to an obsessive level (I dream about deploying once a week now...) but it has all helped me pass my exam with a 900! Eek!

My goal is to pass the 70-685 and 70-686 within the next 1-1.5 months for that dual MCITP title in Enterprise Desktop Support Technician and Enterprise Administration, due to my area (Seattle, WA) being unusually competitive even for Tier 1 jobs.

(A tech at entry level is expected to be 2-4 years in college with Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA and sometimes HP and other certifications.. Hell, even multiple years of experience! Minimum pay is 13-16 an hour tho... Weird.)

So, I'd like to offer any advice on study tips, materials, tough spots, personal labs, etc. that I've gone through and will be going through for the upcoming material- If I scored below a 900, I would feel disingenuous about giving any advice to anyone.

Materials used: 300+ hours of logged labbing, MSoft Press Book on 680 and 685, Professor Messer videos and Microsoft Technet + Literally every single discussion on this board and ever single link in the resources topic. A lot of labbing, again.

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Bokeh

Congrats! Good luck on the 685/686 as well.

N2IT

Nice job. Keep us posted!

darkerz

Bokeh wrote: »

Congrats! Good luck on the 685/686 as well.

It seems you and I have the -exact same- goals for 2011 initially. That's good to know!

685 Labbing today; I'm going through ever possible venue of failure for deployments, loaded up a WDS after struggling to configure everything correctly from scratch. My Image library had a few corrupt files, or would just not do network deploys until I did a hard reset. Why? I don't know. Thus why I want to master this 685 skill set.

Lab consists of 3 xw9400 Workstations with 6GB of RAM each, 250GB set of drives for each workstation, some cheap stock graphics cards and dual nic's. One of them has dual SAS 15k RPM drives; Going to use this beast for some nice virtualizations. A Dual Core Centrino Pro Dell Latitude laptop, a Thinkpad X41 Tablet and a cheap netbook from Bestbuy will simulate different configurations for different kinds of clients/ end users.

Todays goal; Redo every 680 lab from my previous studies and document any and all problems for investigation. Todays 12 hour lab goal; Go over Windows Troubleshooting tools and utilize them as much as possible, even create intentional problems or use known faulty hardware.

Psoasman

darkerz wrote: »

My goal is to pass the 70-685 and 70-686 within the next 1-1.5 months for that dual MCITP title in Enterprise Desktop Support Technician and Enterprise Administration, due to my area (Seattle, WA) being unusually competitive even for Tier 1 jobs.

(A tech at entry level is expected to be 2-4 years in college with Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA and sometimes HP and other certifications.. Hell, even multiple years of experience! Minimum pay is 13-16 an hour tho... Weird.)

I hear you about the jobs. I have seen a lot of help desk jobs with: " MCSE, CCNA, preferred"
Congrats on your pass, that's a nice score.

darkerz

Psoasman wrote: »

I hear you about the jobs. I have seen a lot of help desk jobs with: " MCSE, CCNA, preferred"
Congrats on your pass, that's a nice score.

Thanks.

ATM, it does not look like a MCTS: Windows 7 will do much until its a MCITP:EDST7 title along with a MCITP:SA, A+, Net+, Security+, CCENT/CCNA... Etc.

Frustrating a little. But worth the journey.. So much to learn!

Killermac

Congrats and thanks for posting the tips about what you used.

darkerz

Update on 685 progress;

From what I can tell, there is absolutely no way to just read the book and pass this exam. I'm doing the TS labs now for Chapter 1 & 2 of the Microsoft press book and boy oh boy, does it get repetitive. I've never understood why Windows 7 was so liked but... My ability to create purposeful destructive situations or errors is really hampered by the tools and automated fixups this OS provides. Nothing like Vista's attempts at all, strangely.

Going to do some Network troubleshooting. I have a strong feeling without knowledge of server end operations, a lot of what's being taught in Chapter 2 will fall on deaf ears.

I'll update tomorrow on specifics!

michaelcox

darkerz wrote: »

...I've never understood why Windows 7 was so liked...

because Vista was so hated.

joshmadakor

darkerz wrote: »

due to my area (Seattle, WA) being unusually competitive even for Tier 1 jobs.

I live in Seattle and this is no joke.

Congrats on your pass

NOLAJ

Congrats on the pass!

veritas_libertas

Nice! Passing the 680 is definitely an accomplishment.

NetworkingStudent

darkerz wrote: »

I am typically a lurker but the material, experiences, recommendations for books and labs on this forum have been immensely helpful in not only learning the material up to an obsessive level (I dream about deploying once a week now...) but it has all helped me pass my exam with a 900! Eek!

My goal is to pass the 70-685 and 70-686 within the next 1-1.5 months for that dual MCITP title in Enterprise Desktop Support Technician and Enterprise Administration, due to my area (Seattle, WA) being unusually competitive even for Tier 1 jobs.

(A tech at entry level is expected to be 2-4 years in college with Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA and sometimes HP and other certifications.. Hell, even multiple years of experience! Minimum pay is 13-16 an hour tho... Weird.)

So, I'd like to offer any advice on study tips, materials, tough spots, personal labs, etc. that I've gone through and will be going through for the upcoming material- If I scored below a 900, I would feel disingenuous about giving any advice to anyone.

Materials used: 300+ hours of logged labbing, MSoft Press Book on 680 and 685, Professor Messer videos and Microsoft Technet + Literally every single discussion on this board and ever single link in the resources topic. A lot of labbing, again.

Well I have applied for several IT jobs , and a lot of employers say “that’s nice” when I pull out my certifications. Some employers care and others don’t, I always get a feeling they’re looking for experience more than anything. I believe the certifications do help you stand out when applying for a job. Simply becasue alot people don't want to get them, and it shows thatyou're willing to make an extra effort to stay current.

When I was in school( graduated in December 2010) and hardly any students pursued certifications. Also, hardly any students had certifications. The general thought was I have an IT degree that’s enough for me to get a job…

PS- do you you have any study tips for the windows 70-680 exam?

tsamor

Hi,
Congrads on passing your test. I plan to take the 70-680 in two weeks. I have been studying the Configuring Win 7 self paced training kit and doing the practice tests. Do you have any advice on what else to study? Do you think this book with the practice test will be enough to pass? Thanks for any advice you have.

Psoasman

tsamor wrote: »

Hi,
Congrads on passing your test. I plan to take the 70-680 in two weeks. I have been studying the Configuring Win 7 self paced training kit and doing the practice tests. Do you have any advice on what else to study? Do you think this book with the practice test will be enough to pass? Thanks for any advice you have.

Do you have a lab setup? That will help you, especially when working with Direct Access, Bitlocker, Branch cache.
Make sure you look through the errata threads on the M$ 680 book, as there are a lot of silly mistakes in the book.

Lemonade727

tsamor wrote: »

Hi,
Congrads on passing your test. I plan to take the 70-680 in two weeks. I have been studying the Configuring Win 7 self paced training kit and doing the practice tests. Do you have any advice on what else to study? Do you think this book with the practice test will be enough to pass? Thanks for any advice you have.

Like Psoasman said, make sure you look through the errata so you don't get the wrong things stuck in your head for the exam. And I completely agree and enforce doing some kind of lab setup for this exam if you can as it really does help with certain utilities and it was the only thing that made me start understanding most of the deployment section.

adfabus

Congratulations

darkerz wrote: »

I am typically a lurker but the material, experiences, recommendations for books and labs on this forum have been immensely helpful in not only learning the material up to an obsessive level (I dream about deploying once a week now...) but it has all helped me pass my exam with a 900! Eek!

My goal is to pass the 70-685 and 70-686 within the next 1-1.5 months for that dual MCITP title in Enterprise Desktop Support Technician and Enterprise Administration, due to my area (Seattle, WA) being unusually competitive even for Tier 1 jobs.

(A tech at entry level is expected to be 2-4 years in college with Microsoft, Cisco, CompTIA and sometimes HP and other certifications.. Hell, even multiple years of experience! Minimum pay is 13-16 an hour tho... Weird.)

So, I'd like to offer any advice on study tips, materials, tough spots, personal labs, etc. that I've gone through and will be going through for the upcoming material- If I scored below a 900, I would feel disingenuous about giving any advice to anyone.

Materials used: 300+ hours of logged labbing, MSoft Press Book on 680 and 685, Professor Messer videos and Microsoft Technet + Literally every single discussion on this board and ever single link in the resources topic. A lot of labbing, again.