A minor annoyance you may be able to help me with -

To make life easy I copied the DVD onto my hard drive and have been running the course from there.  I can view the tasks and associated slideshows and videos no problem but when trying to view an assessment or otess simulation I see a flicker of what appears to be the cmd.exe window and nothing else. Any ideas?

I am running a fully updated copy of Win XP Pro logged in with admin rights and it all works as it should if I run if from the DVD.

 Mar 1 

Do the assessments/simulations etc run direct from the CD ?

They are actually launched using a small batch file, this is the reason that you see the CMD screen for a moment.  I took the liberty of visiting your website (very impressive !, is this your own business or are you an employee ?) and I assume from this that you already have more than a fair bit of knowledge in IT, so try this.

It could be a security setting or something that is preventing the batch file from executing, as the window is closing so fast we may be missing the error, to attempt to  see if an error is produced you could try browsing to the batch file directly through the command prompt, so:

From Start, select RUN

Type CMD then ENTER

use the command prompt to browse to the location that you have copied the course contents into (for example C:\course)

The directory that contains the batch files is FSCOMMAND

change to this directory, CD FSCOMMAND

then type Simulation01.bat and press enter ..........

Does this produce an error message, this may help us determine the problem.

I hope I explained that correctly, if not let me know and I'll have another go.

Let me know what happens.

Thanks,

 Mar 1 

Think I’ve solved it:

Following your instructions it fired up no problem using the copy on my local drive so I wondered if the problem was related to the paths.

Because I had copied and pasted the CD the default folder name ended in “(F)” – DOS and batch files are before my time but I guessed the brackets may be the problem - with them removed it all sprang into life. I’d try reproducing it before recommending it to anyone else but hopefully that’s the fix.

I’ve been self employed for about 4 years but it’s only really started to come together in the last year.  There’s allot of competition, much of which comes and goes pretty quickly, so I want some qualifications to give customers a reason to choose me over the next guy and re-enforce my dedication to the job.

 Mar 1 

Well done, glad you got that fixed.

I know what you are up against with regards to competition, I was involved with my family business providing PC repairs etc from around 1993 - 1998, the early years were great, but then around 1997 loads of new names started cropping up and it is difficult to keep up sometimes.

I think you are going down the right route, we have lots of self employed current/past candidates who say that BTEC is quite a good qualification to get, due to the awareness of the general public.

For example, we had one guy who had already passed the A+, but found that if he visited someones home/business and was challenged about his qualifications, they had not heard of the A+ due to not having worked in the IT industry.  He (like yourself) already had the skills and a qualification, but says getting the BTEC saved a lot of explaining as it is available outside of the IT industry too.

If there's anything we can do to help you along with your business just let me know.

Anyway keep in touch,

 Mar 9 

Thanks for you interest.  I have spent about 4 years working flat out and making next to no money getting by almost entirely thanks to the annual ‘fluky big job’.  This last financial year I have still made a low profit but have invested in the business, made a very consistent profit month to month and, crucially, analysed the profitability of each of my activates leading in most of them being culled.  I now have free time to fill with more ‘good’ jobs and so need more of the local market share – hence the need for qualifications.

You make an interesting point about the BTEC being higher profile than the A+.  I started studying for the A+ a while back but it was the older exam and I really hated trying to memorise the order files loaded in windows 3.1!  The books for the new exam came out just before xmas and it looks far more relevant but I’ve been too busy to keep it up so I thought the BTEC would be more manageable but I still hope to follow up with the A+ and possibly a Microsoft qualification of some sort. One day…

I admit to skimming through it at this stage (I’m about half way through unit 3) but I will print everything out and read it properly before taking the plunge. On most of the assessments though I’m having no problems – are these a good indicator or should I be cautious?

 Mar 9 

The questions on the disc are an excellent indicator of what is required in the final exam, you are assessed on the contents of the disk so as long as you don't have any problems here you should breeze it.


I'm sure you'll already be building up lots of repeat custom and getting plenty of work by word of mouth and the four years experience you've had is invaluable.  It also sounds as though you are working efficiently, for example when I used to work in the same field we had a period of "free callout" after a few months I found I was working very hard with very little benefit, after building a small client base and receiving more jobs via word of mouth I found that I could charge a fair price and as long as the work was good the customers where always happy to pay.

After having a quick look at your website etc. you seem really organised, professional and honest so I have no doubts it'll work out for you sooner rather than later.

Having been involved with this type of training for nearly 8 years now, it seems that businesses that are built slowly (slow burners) usually outlast people who are lucky enough to have reasonable success straight away (flash in the pans).

Anyway keep up the hard work and let me know if you need anything.