Back in March I posted about taking the Microsoft 071-553 and 071-554 exams. At the time the exams were in beta and I had to wait a while to find out how I did. After about 5 months (OK, it wasn't really a priority to find out my scores) I realized that I hadn't heard anything from Microsoft about them. I started trying to track down my scores. I contacted Microsoft and they told me that the test provider would have that information. I tried the test provider and they told me that Microsoft had the information. To make a long story short there was a lot of finger pointing and nobody knew what happened to my test information. The best that I could get was that they could tell I had registered for the tests.

I decided to retake the tests. If I had one word of advice it would be to stay away from the testing center when I go in to take a test. When I took the first test I had computer problems. The machine they put me on would spontaneously reboot. It was saving my answers and starting me over again so I wasn't loosing any work, and the countdown didn't seem to be affected but it was a little unnerving. They moved me to another machine that would hang periodically until the first machine was rebooted. When I went in to take the test today it would bring up the screen and ask me for my testing id. I would enter it and click on the enter test button, I would then see a screen saying the test was initializing and then a please wait screen and then back to the screen asking me for my id. The nice lady at the test center ended up calling the test provider for support and talking to someone in England who knew what long drawn out process needed to be followed to get the test working. Interestingly enough the guy on the phone said it used to be documented but wasn't used that much any more so they dropped it from the documentation.

I did eventually get into the test and finished taking the second one. I passed the test so now I am officially upgraded to the MCPD certification. The thing that was most surprising to me is that the final tests seemed to mirror almost exactly what I remember from the beta exams. In the past I have taken beta exams and then seen the exam objectives for the final exams and they seemed to be very different.