By: Martin Weiss, A+ J

22 September, 1998

Passed Core Exam: 88

Passed DOS/Win: 90

Study methods used: A+ Exam Cram book is an excellent source of information that provided most everything on my exam; in addition, it can be read cover to cover in only a couple days! I also used various brain dumps, only after researching the correct answers myself.

I thought the DOS/Win exam was a lot more difficult, but ironically, I ended up with a better score on that one. The customer service questions, I believe are ambiguous and not very well thought out. (Probably why they don’t count them).

I have made an effort to remember what I could. Here it is:

• Know basic ports (pins and gender)
• Know I/O addresses for COM 1,2,3,4
• How do you set jumpers for a CD-ROM drive attached to the secondary IDE adapter by itself?
• How many pins for SCSI cables?
• What does a single beep during POST indicate?
• Know IRQs (I was asked IRQ for floppy)
• Know the best ways to prevent damaging your PC with static electricity.
• How many volts for most 486 CPUs? 586 CPUs?
• You do DIR on a diskette, remove it and insert another, and get the same DIR listing from the 1^st diskette; however, drive works fine on a different machine: whats wrong?
• What is reserved memory? And how large is it?
• What is expanded memory managed by?
• Know that RAM provides faster access time over ROM, Hard and CD-ROM drives.
• While starting DOS, what key do you press to step through the startup files?
• What fixes cross-linked files?
• What device driver is used to create a virtual drive? (Answer was ramdrive.sys; vdisk.sys was not a choice.)
• Know about drive letters pertaining to partitions, logical drives, what happens if you add a second drive etc. (A good resource is www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/file/part-c.html.)
• Understand the importance of the SYSTEM.INI file and what it does as pertaining to Win95.
• What is the difference between cooperative multi-tasking and preemptive? What does Win95 do?
• What is a PIF and know when the _DEFAULT.PIF is used.
• Know when upgrading Win 3.1 to Win95, to save all your application settings (and the recommended way) install Win95 in same directory as Win3.1.
• A customer wants Win95 installed on the D drive, and you are at that point in setup, what do you/can you do?
• What is the Minimum, Recommended and Preferred CPUs for installing Win95?
• What two files compose the Win95 registry.

• What are the extensions for the SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT backup file?
• What is the command file used to bring up the registry editor?
• How do you edit the registry? (Same as previous; NOTE: control panel changes the registry however, this was not a choice.)
• Know all about solving problems when Win95 boots!! (For example how to create log file, step by step, etc.) In addition exam gave scenarios such as locking up before it loads, etc. Know how to troubleshoot the starting and setup of Win95, including the files involved in the startup process!!
• What is the maximum number of characters a file name can have including its path? (A lot of dumps I have seen gave the wrong answer for this!! The answer is 255!! Windows help says 250, other places say 256 but remember this includes Path and the = sign. Besides my other choices were like 8, 16 and 64 J .
• What key do you press to start Win95 in safe mode?
• How do you map a network drive? (i.e. \\computername\sharename\ )
• Know that IRQ 10 through 12 are reserved.
• Know the three components of an operating system.
• Know that PCMCIA type III is for Hard Disks. (Type IV was not choice given.)
• At 20K ohms with 2 amp fuse, what will your multimeter read for good fuse?
• At 1K ohms with 15-amp fuse, what will your multimeter read for good fuse?
• Know how a parallel port and serial port transfer data.
• Know that VESA is faster than ISA/MCA/EISA but not PCI.
• What slot has 124 pins? (PCI seemed to be focused on a bit)
• When would you want to "flash your bios?"
• Given picture of a motherboard, identify the clock oscillator and PCI slots.
• How many logical drives can one physical hard drive contain?
• Know that a resistor is in an ESD wrist strap to protect the wearer.
• Know complete boot process of DOS!
• Know complete boot process of Win95!!
• Know about SETUPLOG.TXT, DETLOG.TXT, and what would you delete to start the Win95 setup process from beginning? (HINT: keep in mind that the purpose of the SETUPLOG.TXT is so that Win95 can skip steps already completed and continue where it last left off.)
• Know the basics of PnP and know that if a customers devices are never being automatically detected, that he/she may not have PnP BIOS.
• Know Dot Matrix printers come in 9 & 24 pins.
• Know what part of a Dot Matrix printer can burn you.
• In order to preserve your groups from win 3.1x, know that you should backup *.grp, system.ini and win.ini.
• To view attributes of file type: ATTRIB [filename]
• Know that the system.dat and user.dat are in the Windows directory (not windows\system!)
• What are the two Windows configuration files?
• Understand protected mode.

• Know that all video cards have RAM.
• What are the steps in preparing a new hard disk for use?
• A user wants to know why his IP address on his workstation keeps changing. What do you tell him? (As a LAN Administrator I’d say quit screwin’ round with your system and get back to work; but the proper answer is because of DHCP)
• What control panel configures protocols?
• How do you add a printer in Win95? (There are several ways, but the proper choice given to me was: Start – Settings – Printers – Add new printer.)
• What is RS-232? (Used for connecting what type of devices?)
• What key combination do you use to switch between applications?
• Know difference between SETUP.EXE programs and INSTALL.EXE programs.
• Know what a MAC is. (NOT as in MACINTOSH!! But as in Media Access Control and its relation to Network Interface Cards.)
• Know how to test Parallel and Serial ports (HINT: look up Loopback plugs!)

Two very good resources to do some research on are:

http://webopedia.internet.com

http://www.smartcomputing.com

The A+ Exam Cram book by Craig Landes and James G. Jones

Good Luck!! If you have any questions or comments, drop me a line: weiss@ats0.attnet.or.jp

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