I studied about 15 hours and exclusively used “CompTIA Security+: Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-201 Study Guide“. My employer already had a Security+ preparation book (I won’t name it) and after skimming the first few chapters I was not impressed. I had them order “CompTIA Security+: Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-201 Study Guide” and I am glad I did.

Initially I read/skimmed through the book in about 7-8 hours. For a certification book it is extremely concise and is actually interesting at times! Certainly the most readable certification book I have ever seen. Next I took all of the end of chapter quizzes and sample tests and made a study sheet consisting of all of the end of chapter review information as well as notes I took from questions I missed (another 7-8 hours). My final score was an 848 out of 900 (750 is passing).

My impressions of the test were – well – it is silly. I am certain you could pass the test and not really know much. It just doesn’t make much sense to me why employers/agencies require these silly certifications. Several of the questions were worded extremely poorly, and most of the questions tested memorization – not actual knowledge. Oh well. I actually did learn a few things from the book (which of course were not tested) and I am glad it is over!

For years the solution was to run VM’s for each version of IE you were required to test (yeah right Microsoft). I have also used IETester but my favorite solution has been Spoon. Until recently Spoon’s virtualization software allowed users to run most versions of IE through the web – that is until Microsoft requested that Spoon remove IE from their service a few months ago.

As if developers needed more reason to dislike Internet Explorer – Microsoft has made a move that will increase the hatred for IE dramatically. And they wonder why they are losing market share? Not only have they provided us a browser in which only one version can be tested on a given machine – they have taken away one of the only tools that has helped us test!

There appear to be some legitimate concerns that Microsoft has in allowing IE virtualization (security, etc.), but there has to be a way to work out a solution for everyone. Please Microsoft – bring back Spoon IE virtualization.

Recently while performing a Windows Update my Vista box locked up.  The update ( for Internet Explorer 8 ) hadn’t quite completed and when I restarted, IE 8 was installed and running fine but my Windows Update didn’t think so.

My first thought was to remove IE 8, surely a re-install would solve the problem.  I followed the advice on Microsoft’s support site ( http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957700 ) for removing IE and neither the standard or alternative instructions worked for me.

After days without a resolution I finally figured out how to re-install IE 8 ( of course, you will only need to perform this hack if the Microsoft’s recommendations don’t work for you ).  Here is how to do it:

1. Download IE 8.
2. Run the installer and wait for the “Setup cannot continue because a more recent version of Internet Explorer has been detected on this computer.” prompt to appear.  DO NOT CLOSE THE PROMPT – if you close the prompt this will not work as the temporary directory mentioned in the next step will be removed.
3. The installer is extracted to one of your drives ( in my case it was not my C drive, so make sure you look at all of your available drives ) in a directory named with a random key ( in my case the key was 5c5c0d193eca399daddb3768b3 ).  Find the directory, open it, and run ie8.msu.  This will allow the installer to run and you will be up and running.