As part of the MCDST course material, we look at accessibility options for end users. The material available is fine for the exam, but doesn't go in to nearly enough detail for the real world. Microsoft have therefore produced a number of factsheets for the various main desktop products which will give you, in great detail, all of the information you need to configure the OS of your choice for end users with any type of impairment.

Visit the site Here

Attached are the slides, notes and testbanks for Chapter 4. If there is anything missing, please let me know and I'll add it in
Accessibility_Options.doc

Interesting_KB.doc

MOAC271_Ins_Chap04.ppt

TESTBANK 4 NO ANS.doc

TESTBANK 4.doc

As always, I promise to start getting my teaching resources in order in time for the start of the course, yet somehow it never happens...

Anyway, from now on, all of the weeks information will be uploaded here. Starting with Chapter 4, everything will be available here...

As you use Windows more and more, your talents will progress to the point that you may want to get in to debugging. I'll save the in's and out's of that for another post - in this one, I'll show you how to generate a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD), and more importantly a crash dump file that you can use for further analysis with your debugger of choice.

Open regedit and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\i8042prt\Parameters

Create a new DWORD value and name it CrashOnCtrlScroll

Right-click on this newly created value and click on Modify

Enter 1 in the Value data field and click on OK

Close regedit and reboot

To generate a BSOD, hold down the right CTRL key and hit Scroll Lock twice

You may also want to have a look in the startup and recovery settings (Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Startup and Recovery)

Here you can change the amount of information collected during a crash, and redirect where it is stored...

Happy BSODing!

This is a nice (short) video that I've been using as part of a user training session that I've been running. I think that it really helps to highlight to users why they shouldn't randomly click on stuff, and that the IT department doesn't tell them to do these things just to be obnoxious!

We've recently been recruiting for desktop support contractors - mostly 1st and 2nd line stuff, XP only, Office 2003, and a bit of light network troubleshooting. There was a worrying lack of knowledge, even to the point of a supposed MCP giving a blank look when asked what the ping command does.

With that in mind, I wrote the following test - you can download the answer free version here, or the version with answers here.

I'm not claiming that the answers I've given are definitive, but should give an idea as to whether the person you're interviewing has at least a bit of a clue! Feel free to copy or amend it - I've been setting the pass mark as 9 questions for 2nd line, but you may wish to change that to represent your environment.