I passed Server with an 840 yesterday. I got a really weird exam cause I had very few RAS questions (4 or 5 max)! This definitely brought my mark down - since I studied RAS to death!!!

There is a new set of books just out called ‘Exam Cram’. They are little red books by Certification Insider Press – and they are great. Short, sweet and to the point (generally unheard of in this field)! And just like everyone else – I suggest doing the transcender exams. Personally I think the transcenders are tougher than the real exam, so don’t worry too much if you arent doing that well on them – but make sure you understand all of the answers before you try the exam!!

I would say the 4 major areas on my exam were - Fault tolerance, NW, file systems & printing. There were also quite a few on perf monitor, Installation, BU and client tools (Ntwk Startup disks, administering ntwks from a wkstation). Here is what I can remember – it is all a blur, but here it goes.

1. 2 on Arcpaths – point to new partition (ie. if new primary partition is added, then partition #ing changes) – Remember Scsi is used if Scsi disabled – they try to trick you by putting scsi enabled!
2. What files R needed for an NT boot disk?
3. Starting/stopping the print spooler – when users cant print & jobs cant be deleted
4. Where is the spool folder config’d (in the registry or printers icon – advanced tab)
5. 2 – 3 quest on Ntwk Admin startup disk – use them to auto connect MS clients to a shared folder containing setup info. (Yes U can use this for 95 clients)
6. How to improve disk performance – disk striping, rearrange data files to balance disks, add controller, Install faster HD.
7. A fair amt on pagefile:

• to optimize performance – keep off boot partition, make > 1 pagefile
• where it is configured – cntrl panel – system - performance
• what happens when it overflows – disk gets more fragmented, apps start slower

1. Which clients can be Import comps? Any NT comp (pdc, bdc & wkstations, but not 95)
2. Frame type problem – select "Manual" when have >1 type on the ntwk & give both types
3. Netbios & SQL apps only need nwlink
4. PDC fails – can users get their Mandatory Profiles? No – these are saved only on the PDC (roaming profiles are cached locally, but man are not)
5. Converting Fat to NTFS – What happens? (lose permissions, but LFN’s are OK)
6. Alerter Service – Which to chose Perf Monitor or Server Mnger (just remember that Alerts sent thru Perf Mon are based on exceeding set thresshold values whereas alerts from Server Mnger are general ie. power loss)
7. BU – what have to do to BU registry (select 1 other file, do it locally)
8. Device.log – enable thru the registry
9. Moving& copying – only time they retain permissions is when moved within same volume
10. You need to make new Nt setup disks, How? Run winnt.exe with /o or /ox switch
11. Printer pools, redirecting print jobs
12. Read carefully: they had really wordy questions on stripe sets with parity & stripe sets without parity – and seemed to use the phrases interchangeably. Watch if the question is looking for the amount of data that can fit on the disk or the total amount of disk space (ie. the parity bit takes up 1/n of the total disk space)