A+: Windows/DOS Study Guide Book

Not as strong a resource as A+: Core Module Study Guide, its sister volume, A+: Windows/DOS Study Guide explores a couple of the operating systems that run on the hardware that A+ engineers are trained to repair and maintain. Groth approaches his subjects individually, detailing the installation and operation of MS-DOS before covering the installation and operation of Windows. In both cases, he explains how to check system resources before installing, then walks the reader though the disk-swapping process. He discusses the various MS-DOS configurations files (AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, mainly) and tells how to use the most common DOS commands (CD, XCOPY, and the like). In the Windows section, he examines the interface conventions and details some important performance procedures, like creating a RAM disk. This book focuses almost exclusively on MS-DOS and Windows 3.x. Windows 95 receives attention in an appendix, but it's very basic--you will get more from one of the many dedicated Windows 95 books on the market. Windows 98 isn't discussed here at all, and Windows NT gets only the barest mention. This focus on older operating systems, however, isn't all bad: most hardware people keep an old copy of DOS 5.0 or the like around precisely for the purpose of running FDISK and the like, all of which Groth covers. Each chapter concludes with a series of multiple-choice questions like those found on the actual A+ Windows/DOS exam. Answers to these questions appear in the back of the book, complete with restatements of the questions but without any discussion or page references. Unlike many exam-training aids, this book does not come with a CD-ROM. --David WallRead More