70-290 Study Material 1

[Crichton]

Hi,

I'm currently studying for the 70-290 exam and I'm due to take one of the official Microsoft courses next month. However, I wanted to try and get ahead a bit by doing some study beforehand, and I've borrowed a TestOut CD-ROM study guide and a CBT Nuggets CD-ROM from a friend who's already done this exam.

The only thing is, both CD's were purchased in 2004 so they are 3 years old, and I wondered if anyone could tell me if they are still any good ?? or are they too far out of date now ??

Thanks
Lee.

 

[porkchopexpress]

I studied a three year old book for 70-292 about 4 months ago and passed the exam most of the stuff is exactly the same. Check to see if any R2 features are covered by the exam as they occasionally add questions for new products i had a few WSUS questions.

Make sure you know NT Backup cmd switches i had three questions on them and even though we use it on a couple of boxes here funnily enough it's run from a scheduled task s i can't remember them off the top of my head .

 

[Crichton]

Hopefully I should be Ok, as I mentioned I have booked to go on the Microsoft Official Curriculum Course 2273 in January, so anything not covered should be covered on the course anyway.

At the moment I have the 2 CD's and a Sybex book which covers R2, so I've plenty to have a look at until the course.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[porkchopexpress]

I'm sure you'll be fine if you're on the course as well.

Good luck.

 

[ntinlin]

I just passed 70-290 yesterday actually with a 914.

I used the Testout video learning thingy also from 2004 that a friend had finished with and experience.

Nothing much on backup, lots of sims on permissions, group management etc. Couple of bits on WSUS.

Basically it was 50% really easy stuff and 50% head scratching to remember stuff like vssadmin command line switches.

70-291 tomorrow but don't think I'll do as well on that, a lot harder apparently.

Neill

 

[porkchopexpress]

70-291 DNS, DNS, DNS loads of sims and very in depth questions, i took 70-292 which shares allot of content and it's the only MCP exam where i came anywhere near running out of time.

 

[ntinlin]

Joy. :-(

At least I have Second Chance.

Neill

 

[kmcferrin]

How close were you, and how bad was it? I have that one to look forward to in January.

 

[ntinlin]

Hey pce I thought you said 70-291 was hard?

I was finished it in about 1.5 hours with a 920. :-D

Actually some of it was pretty tough. About 10 of the 46 questions were head scratchers.
Thankfully there were about 6 questions on WSUS which were easy.
2 or 3 on RRAS bits, 1 on AD delegation which I found a bit strange for a network exam. 2 on VPN but both site-site rather than client to site.
As you said a LOT on DNS, although half of those were look at this network diagram and look at IPConfig then decide what is wrong. Usually wrong DNS server.
Only 1 real subnetting question thankfully since I hadn't really had time to study that. Stupid I know but ...

About 6 sims and 6 click on the correct things on this screen to make it work.

3 exams down 4 to go during January, including 70-620 which I'm told is a 1*.
I actually scheduled them the wrong way round though since I do 70-293 before 70-620, should have done it the other way around so I get my MCSA more quickly.


Hopefully it will actually help in the job hunting.
Although UK recruiters and companies tend to want to pay next to nothing even for MCSE. Since most of them don't even know what MCSE stands for let alone the work and experience it entails that is rather annoying.

Neill


70-284 - 880
70-290 - 914
70-291 - 920

 

[porkchopexpress]

Well done Neill

Nah i said 70-292 was hard but they cover some similar content I’ve not taken 70-291 but it’s rated 4 stars out of 5. 70-292 seemed to be disproportionately hard though for some reason, i've never scored less than 880 in any exam but i failed 70-292 once and passed with 770 the second time.

 

[porkchopexpress]

Let me know how 70-620 is i'm thinking about taking 70-621 and they look quite similar. If it's as straight forward as the MCDST exams it won't be a problem.

 

[Crichton]

Hopefully it will actually help in the job hunting.
Although UK recruiters and companies tend to want to pay next to nothing even for MCSE. Since most of them don't even know what MCSE stands for let alone the work and experience it entails that is rather annoying.

I have very little experience working in IT which is part of the reason I want to do 70-290 & 70-270. I've done a national diploma, comptia A+ & Cisco Networking essentials already and hopefully if I can get both these exams passed I can get my foot in the door somewhere to get the experience I desperately need.

I agree that salaries do seem poor for support jobs, but for me anything I can get that pays £18k + a year will be ideal just so I can get some experience and then hopefully move on to something better.

 

[porkchopexpress]

Having the badges can help when applying for jobs as HR departments in larger orgs tend to filter applications this way. It can also be a bonus if they're deciding between a few of you as they won't have to pay for your training if you're already certified ;-)

 

[Crichton]

Having the badges can help when applying for jobs as HR departments in larger orgs tend to filter applications this way. It can also be a bonus if they're deciding between a few of you as they won't have to pay for your training if you're already certified

Come to think of it, I forgot to mention that I did become an MCP back in 2001, but it won't be valid now. Back then I was looking at getting MCSE certified but I had to drop out for personal reasons and I only ended up doing 70-098 implementing & supporting Windows 98.

 

[onoski]

Big congratulations, and I take it you only used the TestOut prep video and software?

 

[ntinlin]

To me? If so then thanks, just wish me luck with the other 4.
For the 284, 290 and 291?

Didn't look too much at the TestOut for 284 since Exchange was a big part of my day to day job until I got made redundant a couple of weeks ago. Just used it to brush up on the 5.5 migration stuff since it's years since I did that and we used Quest, not any of the MS migration tools. Plus the built in testing of course.

290 and 291 I made heavy use of TestOut, especially 291. Again I've done most of the stuff, had to upgrade a company's DNS, DHCP, etc. etc. recently so I remembered most of that, but there's the way you use stuff in the real world and the MS way. RRAS being a case in point, who would use that?
However the TestOut 291 vids didn't cover subnetting that I noticed ( didn't have time to go all the way through the course) but I did a quick brush up from the MS blue book for that. And of course wrote down host numbers, powers of 2, authentication methods etc. on the scratch card before I started the test. Only had one question that dealt with subnets though.
Also used the blue book for 290 for the questions, didn't look at any of the actual learning material in it.

Note that the version of TestOut I used for 291 does not cover WSUS, only SUS. But again I was the WSUS admin. so didn't need any help with that.


Luckily my company paid for all the blue books and exams as part of my redundancy package, I already had the TestOut from a friend who'd finished with it.
The TestOut stuff seems great to me but very expensive if financing yourself unless you can get a discount deal as mentioned in another thread.

Neill

 

[onoski]

Thanks for the feedback ntinlin

 

[Crichton]

Got the 70-290 exam tomorrow so I'm going over practice questions and exams, and I came across this question which confused me :

You administer an active directory domain on your companies network. Your assistant John will be responsible for deploying windows XP professional computers in the domain. John has a domain user account and can install windows XP Pro. He should be granted only enough authority to add those computers to the domain. All policies in the domain are currently at their default settings.

Which of the following should you do ?

a. Nothing needs to be done, any domain user, by default, can add new computers to the domain.

b.Use the delegation of control wizard to grant John the permissions on the computers container.

c.Grant John the "Add Workstations to Domain" right in the local GPO on each computer.

d.Grant John the "Add Workstations to Domain" right in the Default Domain GPO.

e.Grant John the "Add Workstations to Domain" right in the Default Domain Controllers GPO policy.

f. Add Johns user account to the local Administrators group on each PC to be added.




According to my test software the answer is A, because Domain Users get this right from the authenticated users group, which allows any member of the Domain Users group to add up 10 computers to the network.

Nowhere have I ever come across this, everything I read says you have to be an Administrator to add computers to the network, or an Administrator or Account Operator to create a computer account.

Is this answer right or wrong ??

Another thing that confuses me slightly is with groups. On a single domain Microsoft keep going on about using the A G DL P method for creating groups as the recommended way to do it. However, whenever I get questions about assigning the least number of groups to users and resources, they always assign both users and resources to global groups. I know that it is possible to do it like this, but you would think that if this is a Microsoft exam they would want you to be able to show that you are using their recommended method.

 

[porkchopexpress]

Any domain user can add upto 10 computers to the domain by default. As far as i can tell no one at MS remembers why someone suggested it in the design phase and nobody said NO DON'T DO IT!!!

 

[Crichton]

It's weird, I can't seem to find anything in my study material about this right being assingned to the authenticated users group.