Yep, it was tricky. I’ve spent a few weeks studying this and apparently need more time. It’s quite a bit harder after just coming from a few CompTIAs exams.
Actually, I rushed this and crammed during the last week because of a job interview for a promotion (trying to impress). I have the CBT Nuggets series and they are excellent. Honestly, I have to say that 99% of what was on the exam are in the CBTs. Along with watching them, I took over 40 pages of notes (double sided) to make it all soak in more and then review later. I also have enough spare money to invest in several test machines. I have two slim Dell PCs under my coffee table (to force myself into training while watching TV/news) and three additional PCs, one being an actual server w/RAID-5. All of these are running W2K3 enterprise edition (120-trial version). Also, surprisingly you can use this version all over your lab. In addition, I went to a local university and community college and both let me sign up on the MSDN software checkout, so I was able to check out, copy, and get several more product keys of the software!!! I also have two of these PCs with 1GB of memory for MS Virtural PC, to load clients.
I have two DCs running and did a lot of the hands-on practice early on in my studying. But as I went on and got lazy, I just watched and learned instead of hand-on. I could tell a huge difference. It sucks when you say, “Oh yeah, I remember that but aren’t quite sure how to do it”. Trust me, hands-on is mandatory.
But overall, the test didn’t seem that hard, even though I failed it. Total 44 questions, 4 sims, 3:05 time. I scored 546/700.
Oh well, I’m going to take another two to three weeks and only take it when I feel I’ve perfected GPOs, SUS, TS, RDP, etc.