Study Tips for Passing Microsoft's 70-270 Exam
Even if you've already passed all the previous Windows professional exams, the XP exam can be challenging. Although there's an appearance change between the Win2K and XP, most professionals quickly learn that XP has more in common with Win2K than not. However, the devil is always in the details. Windows XP's new features are easy to miss if you don't dig into those details. While this article can't cover everything, the following study points should give those you with good foundation in Win2K a clear view of what you'll need to know to pass 70-270 exam. They should also help if you have a lot of Windows XP experience and want to brush up before taking the plunge.
Tip 1: Entangled For Sure or Encrypting File System
Today more professionals are traveling with their computers, making it more important than ever that electronic files aren't stolen. With Win2K, Microsoft introduced the encrypting file system (EFS) that allowed files to be encrypted while stored on the hard disk. This eliminated the vulnerability of files stored on the hard drive being accessed from another version of the operating system than the one that created the security.
Although this allowed you to prevent others from gaining access to your files even if the computer was stolen, you could only have one user with access and one "recovery agent" -- one person besides the original user who could decript the file. This was put in place just in case the user wasn't available. This works fine for those situations where you needed to have one user with the file -- however, it prevents a lot of situations where more than one user needed access to the file. Windows XP fixed this limitation by allowing multiple users and multiple recovery agents. Know how this works in Windows XP as well as how to configure it.
Tip 2: Capable and Compatible
One of the big pushes for Windows XP was compatibility. To that end Microsoft installed properties that can be changed in the shortcuts of an application that allow you to control the way the system interacts with the application when it runs it.
These options break down into two main groups. The first group controls the APIs visible to the application. Windows XP pretends to be a different operating system by using the DLLs that originally shipped with those operating systems. If the application doesn't like XP natively, it can always pretend to be someone else.
The other group of controls allow Windows XP to change the video display to something that the application might find more palatable. Many applications were designed when 800 x 600 in 256 colors was considered high-end graphics. Windows XP's graphic options allow it to change the display to suit older applications.
For 70-270 exam, Microsoft expect you to understand how to troubleshoot legacy options and use the compatibility options to get them running.
Tip 3: Offline Files
Traveling professionals can have their files and since Windows 2000, they've been able to keep copies of the files on the network as well. Offline Folders allow the traveling professional to keep a synchronized copy of the network files with them.
There are two basic ways that Offline files work. By default, offline files will keep copies of the files opened most recently. The number of files the system keeps is based on the cache size for offline files. In addition, however, you can specify files or folders that you want to have available offline.
Before you sit this exam, be sure to know how offline files work in Windows XP, how they are cached and how to synchronize.
Tip 4: Policy Priority
Just in case you missed the memo, Microsoft wants you to think about group policy. Despite the exam's focus on workstations, you still need to know the basics of how group policies work.
Group policies are applied at the local machine, at the site level, at the domain level, and finally through each of the organizational units necessary to get to the machine. You'll need to know what happens when those policies conflict including the options to block inheritance and to prevent settings from being inherited.
Tip 5: Get Prepared with SYSPREP
Anyone who has taken Microsoft's previous workstation-level tests for Windows NT Workstation or Win2K Pro will tell you that Microsoft puts a strong emphasis on rolling out large deployments. For Windows XP Professional, that means both SYSPrep and RIPrep. RIPrep is the tool that is used to create images for Remote Installation Services deployment. RIPrep is more or less unchanged from Win2K Pro.
SYSPrep has, however, changed quite a bit. In addition to the options that SYSPrep offered in Windows 2000, you'll find new options that allow you to make an intermediary image. This can be done so that the image can be reopened and tweaked later. This simplifies the process of updates through multiple parties and updating images over time.
Tip 6: Plug and Play or Plug and Pray?
Plug and play was introduced back in Windows 95. When it was initially introduced there was a joke running around the industry that it was more like "plug and pray". Today plug and play is real, but it does still occasionally get out of whack. Microsoft expects you to know how plug and play works and how to troubleshoot it when things go wrong.
Plug and play can become confused when you have legacy devices, but it also can be touchy about interconnecting hubs and power abnormalities. Knowing how to eliminate the potential causes of problems for plug and play is critical to troubleshooting these sorts of problems.
Tip 7: Protect your PC
It's an unfortunate reality today that your computer must have protection. Microsoft has included both Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) and Internet Connection Firewall (ICF). ICS has been with Windows for a while. It allows one computer to connect to the Internet and for other computers on the local network to share the same connection. Internet Connection Firewall is another story. ICF is new with Windows XP and offers the basic "stateful" protection against attacks from the Internet. Microsoft expects its certified XP professionals to understand how these two Internet-related features differ and the kinds of problems they can cause when enabled.
Tip 8: Swiss Army FSUTIL
A new command to Windows XP is the FSUTIL command. This command allows you to do almost anything with drives and volumes. It supports changing and fixing all of those "little" things that can sometimes go wrong with a file system that were difficult to fix before. You should think of FSUTIL as a combination scalpel and sledgehammer. Be sure to understand it so that you can understand the file systems better.
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