The best Microsoft OS Guides: Reddit reviews

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I wanted to add that if you're brand new to PowerShell then you should take a look at <em>PowerShell in a Month of Lunches</em>.

Also, take a look at /r/PowerShell. There are fantastic people in there, and they're incredibly knowledgeable.

The best way to learn anything depends on your learning style. Some people learn better by reading, some by watching videos, and some by doing. It's important to know how you learn effectively.

That said, my recommendation is to find a routine task you do regularly and figure out how to do it automatically with PowerShell. Do you archive old report files to a specific directory structure? Learn about Copy-Item. Do you manage Exchange, SCCM, O365, anything like that? They all have automation support with PowerShell. There are even community modules that support a lot of third-party products - for example, the JiraPS project allows you to manage JIRA items with PowerShell, including creating new issues, commenting on existing ones, and closing them out.

If you prefer reading, the book <u>Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches</u> is often recommended - but it's very important that you actually follow along with the exercises in the book. Type them and run them on a live computer whenever possible.

If you prefer videos, I suggest the Microsoft Virtual Academy series on PowerShell. These are a bit long, but they do a great job of teaching you both concepts and practical knowledge.

Hope that helps!

I'm not sure I'd consider Powershell devops than a core Windows administration tool. Devops to me would be like Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, etc. (Puppet I think would be good for a Windows person to learn.)

You can do Powershell in a month of lunches: https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617291080

You can do the Microsoft Virtual Academy as well: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-courses/getting-started-with-powershell-3-0-jump-start-8276

Powershell is very object oriented and pipelined, it's not a bunch of "++1, !, +3," style of true programming. It's more of a "get-aduser doej"

A lot of the commands are the same syntax prefixes, like "get" and "export".

Don't be discouraged, envision yourself knowing this inside and out in a year, and your mind will work you toward this goal.

What, specifically, do you work with that you think can benefit from scripting?

Powershell in a month of lunches is apparently quite good, that will cover Powershell from the basics to relatively advanced concepts, although I don't recall it covers AD.

Once you have a grasp of PowerShell, the AD modules are not much trouble to learn at all, MCSA should at least cover some of that.

Also - Take a look under the "resources" tab on the right of this sub.

I like a nice ham sandwich for a lunch point.

As far as getting into PS. This is the usual recommendation.

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617291080

Enjoy your book and sandwich.

Learn Powershell in a Month of Lunches

Also, SS64 has a great Index/reference of PS commands.

Another good thing to do is to start searching the web for "how do I $taskName in Powershell."

Lol what?

Dude, you don't need any fucking classes to start out in IT

You can buy textbooks and earn certs while spending minimum amounts of money

Do not sign up for some fucking ridiculous 23k course. That's insane.

This field is so beautiful because you can dive in without any student debt whatsoever, don't hamstring yourself by going into debt like that

If you want an entry level job, go buy the A+ cert book on amazon

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1549500043&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=a%2B

Maybe do network+ too(that's the path i started out with so I'm biased I suppose).

You're talking like less than 50 bucks for the textbooks and then a couple hundred bucks for the tests(total), and with those 2 certs you can easily get an entry level help desk job and start working your way up.

It beats the fuck out of manual labor, that's for sure

If you’re looking for resources that may be helpful, have you tried the “Learn PowerShell in a month of lunches” series by Don Jones? https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_fJafCb1K1VSKQ

Also, Microsoft Virtual Academy has a good training course with Jeffrey Snover (https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/getting-started-with-microsoft-powershell-8276)

They’ve been a major help to me and I had no experience coding prior to them.

There sure are books!

My favorite authors are Mike Myers and Todd Lammle.

Here's a guide for the CompTIA A+ certification.

These books can be a bit pricey, but it's EVERYTHING you need to know for the certification. If you have this book and a computer to practice on, you have everything you need to pass. The book is nearly 1,500 pages long as well. If you struggle to afford the books, you can always search online for illegal copies of older versions and possibly even the latest version that I linked. I assume the copyright police aren't going to be breaking down your doors.

The A+ certification estimates 6-9 months of hands-on training to be able to pass, but it can definitely be done in a shorter amount of time. Don't get dissuaded if after a month you feel tired of studying. Even if you don't have the means to take the exam, the information you can learn will help you so much.

Pick up Powershell in a month of lunches and grab a free month trial of pluralsight. Two great resources for learning the basics.

For your lab, check on your local craigslist; someone is always getting rid of some gear there. If not there try EBay, can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a CCNA lab kit like these: Cisco Lab Kit

Once you have lab equipment, get some windows servers spun up as that will make learning powershell both applicable and rewarding to you.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_r74aGb8T88YNW

That book helped me learn all the basics and then some that I needed, when I started learning powershell. I still use it as a reference for writing scripts even after reading it too. It is super helpful and gets you learning the shell, the syntax of the script, and how to find information in the shell to do what you need. I can't recommend this enough.

Messers videos are good as they are laid out in the same order as the exam objectives, i did get this book to read and make notes from (also laid out in the same order as the objectives), i use a flashcard app to make notes and ask myself questions. with regards to the ports i did them in reverse also - what port is FTP ? or what protocol uses tcp/21 so i learnt them both ways

I would recommend his notes aswell, they are just a printable version of the videos, but i referred to this when i was reading the book and making my own notes to see if he had something i missed.

All the things he mentions have a chance of coming up on the exam, so i did my best to try commit as much of it to memory as i could.

Powershell is a very handy tool to have, but you don't need to 'dedicate' yourself. Go through this book and you'll be a step above a majority of IT professionals easily. https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617291080

Ticket: "I cannot change the order of my displays from control panel anymore"

Ticket Closed

Resolution: Git gud, scrub

There is an all in one A+ book on amazon (https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X) This book is a good read through for general concepts - read it quickly, don't go super hardcore study mode on this book, its quite long. This along with professor messer (free, google it)after quickly reading through was all I used to get my A+.

If you have some knowledge of computers and perhaps built your own you could be ready for a helpdesk role already. I know all I had was "customer service" and some basic technical knowledge before I got my first job. Just be sure to word your customer service skills as if you were on the phone doing customer service - since this may be a large portion of the job. Asides from that - google common helpdesk interview questions, their answers, and then google the specific terms like dhcp and dns to understand how they work.

Depends on your previous knowledge of scripting/programming but if little to none I'd recommend

Learn Powershell in a month of lunches: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_3H478HT6G3ZY175PXSHD

For me the biggest help was the All in One book by Mike Meyers people complain that he is long winded in the book. But I think the stories that he tells give insite and the full context needed to pass the 1002 exam. I'll add a link below.

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-1001-220-1002/dp/1260454037/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&amp;keywords=a%2B&amp;qid=1623521696&amp;sr=8-1

I'm not aware of a fourth edition. You want "Learn Windows Powershell in a Month of Lunches". This is the one I have but it's third edition: Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, Third Edition: Amazon.co.uk: Jones, Donald, Hicks, Jeffrey: 9781617294167: Books

There is also "Learn Powershell Scripting in a Month of Lunches" - This has a yellow cover and should be read after the above book. It goes into writing scripts you can reuse but you need to know the basics in the first book before you can really get into this.

There is also another called "Learn Powershell Tool Making in a Month of Lunches" - This is an older version of "Learn Powershell Scripting in a Month of Lunches". They renamed it in later versions.

What are you using to study right now?

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I have my second test today, but I've used Mike Meyer's book as well as his Udemy course. Then I used Jason Dion's practice exams. Those are all very popular resources to get started.

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Another popular (and free) resource is professor Messer on Youtube.

Hopefully someone has something a bit more current, but Petzold's Programming Windows is (was?) the win32 bible. There are newish reviews on Amazon so it looks like it still floats a few boats.

Well, one option is Charles Petzold's book. It's a bit date now, as it came out in 1998, but a lot of the core API is the same (file operations, threads, dealing with Window messages etc.).

EDIT: I just remembered that I bought another book that's not quite as old: Windows System Programming, 4th Edition.

I thought they were both pretty good really. Thought the last one (obviously) has some newer stuff than Petzold's book.

Mike Meyers book is what I used. Here is the the link to Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X

Basically the A+ bible right there. Mike Meyers cert books are pretty much the go to. For CCNA, they publish their own stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_WG7E0NR7WXYNM1H67Z28

That book is probably one of the best books I've ever read for learning a topic. Other than reading that book, I would suggest finding something you want to automate and then plugging that into Google. I think the first script I ever wrote was a mass reboot of all workstations in my domain. I just googled it until I found where someone else did it and then tweaked it for my use.

Mike Meyers is the book to look for https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-1001-220-1002/dp/1260454037/ref=sr_1_3?crid=YLL61HQPL215&amp;dchild=1&amp;keywords=mike+meyers+comptia+a%2B+1001%2F1002&amp;qid=1621446925&amp;sprefix=Mike+meyers%2Caps%2C202&amp;sr=8-3

This book goes into overkill on all the topics, it kinda explains things as the author sees it logically. I bought this book first and read it from start to finish and it was a long haul. i would recommend the passport version of the book, it is organised as the topics are on the exam and gives you the information needed with minimal extra.

I would also recommend watching Professor Messers videos as he gives you the information needed as they are in the objectives.

There is alot of great information on this post. I was actually in the same boat as the description you gave. Wanted to get into programming but did not understand how to actually apply the knowledge after going through some lynda/youtube courses.

I have purchased a study guide for the Comp TIA A+ certification after christmas to broaden my understanding on hardware, networks, and security. Hopefully it helps, but if there are any other suggestions please let me know! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1260454037/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_HNm-FbDR5BR2K

I bought this book to study. It's a bit thiccc at 1,318 pages of study content, but it helped me pass. I watched some YouTube videos because I was having a hard time conceptualizing how printers work; and made flashcards for things like port numbers and IP address classes (although the address classes wasn't on the exam at all). I'm sure there's probably shorter books to help cram the important information in; or if you prefer videos, Professor Messer has an A+ Certification series on YouTube.

I'm reading Mike Meyers' A+ Certification Passport, and it follows the exam objectives (which is one reason why I am using it). Prowse's Exam Cram also follows the objectives, too, though it is a little too thorough for my taste, discussing material that I don't think will be on either of the A+ tests.

You can find both of these books at https://learning.oreilly.com/, which you can check out through a trial account.

Awesome! I'm feeling more and more confident about this now! I'll most likely attempt a networking certification through CompTIA as well, but later on. I believe you're referring to the book that I saw on Amazon:

CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide, Ninth Edition (Exams 220-901 & 220-902)

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/125958951X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_nTIlybCJWQ4J1

It's the one I was considering buying, but I saw 2015 somewhere on the page and didn't know if it was still applicable.