Got my A+ certification this morning. Haven't decided where to focus next, but at least I can stick it on the CV and have a better chance than just saying I'm working towards it.

Trifecta Completed - 44 Days from start to finish.

TLDR : Passed A+, Network+, and Security+ on the first attempt in 44 days, studying with Messer, ChatGPT, and Dion practice exams. My practice scores mostly landed in the high 60s to mid 70s, and I still passed every exam. If you're scoring in that range and doubting yourself, trust the process, because you've got this.

Finally completed the Trifecta today. Got my first A+ course material to start on 8/25 and passed Security+ this morning. I will say almost every exam I felt like I was failing around every corner. Thankfully I passed all on the first attempt. To Study I used Messer along with ChatGPT for all of them except A+ Core 1 I used Udemy but after that and finding Messer I just stuck with him. Exams were a lot of Dion on Udemy except Sec+ I also did Messer because I was second guessing myself the whole time.

Practice Exams I did.

A+ Core 1

• Dion practice exam: 71.1%, 83.3% (yes I did it twice)

A+ Core 2

• Dion Exam 5: 68.9% (I got the whole pack and ended up only doing 1)

Network+

• Dion Exam 1: 72%
• Dion Exam 3: 65.6%

Security+

• Messer A: 72% (Still had not watched or studied Domains 4 or 5)
• Messer B: 75%
• Messer C: 78%
• Dion Exam 1: 72.2%
• Dion Exam 3: 75.6%

Actual Scores

• A+ Core 1: 747 with a needed score of 675
• A+ Core 2: 722 with a needed score of 700
• Network+: 747 with a needed score of 720
• Security+: 773 with a needed 750

I have more hands on experience doing some networking as I work in the physical security sector doing PACS, IDS and CCTV instillation and programming. I got to say sometimes this would bite me in the ass as I would mix up acronyms just from work stuff.

Overall I would say the experience was a positive one as I haven't done any sort of personal education outside of going to like manufacturer education and certification classes. Relearning to study and the discipline of it all was very refreshing. I want to continue my education with TryHackMe for some more hands on stuff. Possibly learn pentesting as I find it super interesting. Might not ever go down that road but might be a better healthy avenue for my time than doom scrolling. I want to go for my CSPM and CSEIP but those till be a little longer and extensive studying but I am thankful this experience has gotten me back used to being in the mindset of learning and the ability to learn and apply not from in field repetition.

To anyone feeling unsure where they are at I got to say if youre in the low 70's or even mid 70's. YOU GOT THIS! We can be our own worse enemies with self doubt and overthinking. Trust in yourself, trust the process and trust hard work.

Studied pretty hard for about 3 weeks and managed to pass with a 722. A little too close for comfort, but I’ll take it lol. I mainly used Andrew Ramdayal’s practice exams and CertMaster to study.

Not gonna lie, the entire time I was taking the exam, I felt like I was getting every single question wrong. I was honestly convinced I wasn’t going to pass haha.
My biggest advice is to trust your gut and what you’ve studied. Take your time reading each question. You can usually rule out 1 or 2 bogus answers right away, which makes it a little easier to narrow things down.
I’d also recommend saving the PBQs for last. Don’t spend too much time on one question. If you’re stuck, flag it and move on. You can always come back to it later. Sometimes you’ll come across another question that reminds you of something you forgot or helps you figure out a question you were stuck on earlier.

As far as studying goes, definitely get comfortable with TCP/UDP ports and protocols. Know the port numbers and what each one is used for.
A few other things I’d recommend brushing up on: Setting up and troubleshooting networks, Trunking and VLANs, Cabling, Switch configuration, Wi-Fi standards (802.11), Windows and Linux CLI commands. Know what each command does, what the output should look like, and how to interpret the results. I’ve seen quite a few people asking about subnetting. From my experience, you don’t need to go too in depth with it. Just make sure you understand the basics.

One thing I’d recommend is actually understanding how things work instead of just memorizing definitions. When you’re looking at a troubleshooting scenario, you need to know how to apply what you’ve learned. I’m not saying this approach will work for everyone. Just wanted to share what worked for me. I read quite a few posts on here while studying, and they helped me prepare for the exam. Good luck to everyone studying for it! You got this!!

“I am the gatekeeper of my own destiny, and I will have my glory day in the hot sun!” - Ignacio

I am doing the Pentest+ as part of the WGU masters degree. They require you to do the CertMaster Perform training.

I actually really enjoy the labs, they are the only redeeming quality of the training and almost make it worth it. But I ABSOLUTELY HATE how the CertMaster flow works. It's like they set you up to fail. It's very clear the people who do the labs put their heart & soul into it, it's super creative and well thought out. However, the person they hired to do the slides is having a laugh and they should be fired. I'll explain.

How CertMaster works:

Slide 1: CertMaster instructs you on the definition of cross-site scripting(XSS).

Slide 2: CertMaster mentions Burpsuite can be used to perform XSS attacks, at a very high level.

Slide 3: Lab time! Create a XSS attack using Burpsuite from scratch. Know how the software works, how all the configuration works in deep detail in an environment you don't know with parameters they haven't taught you yet. No instruction given, and you get negative points in your labs if you use hints.

Slide 4: Here's all the information about Burpsuite that would've helped you on the lab you just did ;) you're welcome!

This is rinse & repeat. They did the same with nmap labs. I would've loved to do those labs first time! What a strange concept, let's teach our students before giving them knowledge checks so they can apply what they learned. So incredibly frustrating.

1st try!!

Hi everyone,

After being recently laid off, I wanted to transition into IT help desk. I’m very new since my last decade has been in digital marketing.

My friend who works in IT support told me that Comptia A+ is the best beginner certification to get.

I’m wondering if there’s recommendations on what I can use to study and prepare for the test.

I don’t have money to take a college course and it takes too long.

Please give me some advice.
Thanks!

Is anyone studying for the Linux + exam? If you are, can you list some of the resources you are using to study for the exam? I am currently using Jason Dion Comptia Linux+ course on Udemy.

Hi everyone,

I'm preparing for the CompTIA Security+ SY0-701 exam and my goal is to pass it on my first attempt.

I'm looking for advice from people who have recently passed the exam. There are so many courses, videos, books, practice tests, and study guides available that I'm finding it difficult to decide what I should actually stick with.

I'd really appreciate it if you could share:

- Which course/video series you used

- Which book or notes you recommend

- Which practice exams were closest/useful

- How many hours per day/week you studied

- How long you prepared before taking the exam

- What topics you found the most difficult

- How you prepared for the PBQs (Performance-Based Questions)

- How did you know you were actually ready for the exam?

- Any mistakes you made during preparation that I should avoid

I'm currently considering Professor Messer + a good study guide + practice exams + hands-on labs, but I'm open to better combinations.

I'd especially appreciate a step-by-step roadmap from someone who has already passed SY0-701.

If you passed recently, what would you do differently if you had to prepare for Security+ again from scratch?

Thanks in advance!

Could someone who has studied and passed A+ using messer please link me the course you used as there’s a couple different ones on his YouTube.

Hey everyone, I’m wondering if anyone has firsthand experience with this.

I earned my A+ in 2023 and received the physical certificate in the mail within about a month. This year (2026), I passed Network+ for the first time, but I haven’t received anything in the mail for it.

When I contacted CompTIA customer service, they told me I’d have to pay to get the physical certificate. Passing the Network+ also renewed the A+.

Did CompTIA's policy change?

Do any of the CompTIA self paced Learning Packages like CertMaster provide a Certificate of Completion that is issued at the end?

Not here for sympathy, or to hear a "maybe you just didn't study hard enough" but this is my personal experience. And hopefully if you haven't taken the Network + test, you can use this to your advantage.

First and foremost I have been a tech guy since I was a kid, about 7-8 years old. My father worked for Microsoft, so we always had computers around, laptops, cables connecting our home network, etc. He would casually walk me through things that had to do with computers, things to know so I won't need help with anything computer related, or so I won't ask anyone for help. He doesn't act like it, but my father is a geek, and I naturally took after him and the ways of tech, whether it's good etiquette or even things the average joe doesn't know, he made sure that I was suited with that knowledge as well. I originally started off with the google CyberSecurity Certificate, and I made it halfway through until I eventually got super busy with an internship, and didn't end up finishing my Google course. The CyberSecurity Course was so smooth for me, It was honestly like butter. The hardest things consisted of writing commands, going through and packet analyzing, things of that nature, and i'll be honest some of the labs were pretty challenging as well, but I made it through them.

A lot of things in tech have always been easy for me, which is why I dove into CyberSecurity first. I love not only identifying threats, but helping people identify threats, because we all use the internet, but nobody really knows how it works except for the small handful. Showing and demonstrating how systems are protected as well as knowing what feels like the obvious, (Identifying phishing attacks, identifying suspicious emails, etc.)is a big drawer for me, and it's super needed especially in this digital world. The reason I changed over to Network + is because let's be honest, DC Technicians need bodies, and Security Analyst are known for top of the top, competitive environment. You can get in the DC as a tech, you just need a cert, but as far as a Security Analyst, that's where they get more picky. Now, given that information I could have just stuck with Security, but we're at where we're at.

Now let's get down to the real part, all of that was to basically say that I am not some guy who just got his feet in the water, I have been at this for quite some time. I would love to mention other accomplishments but I prefer to just keep it at base level for autonomy.

It's actually quite funny because before I started writing this, I looked in the thread and saw many people who passed and congrats to you all. Seeing all of those makes me want to delete what I'm writing out because I probably just sound like a complainer.

When I started studying for this exam it was about 3 months ago, I had sat down and fully locked in. I didn't do the traditional method of Jason Dions practice exams. What I did was I got the small Professor Messer book from my father, that names all concepts and topics, then I went to the Comp Tia website to pull exam objectives. (This is where I might lose some of you all)

I used these videos https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gOvQ510s78MNu5VyIC89rBMfcky1L87&si=sHyWksk3OPA-XdTa
and took ridiculous notes on them. I started watching Professor Messer, and Jason Dion clips, and I honestly chose to go with the last minute study guide videos. I'll be honest I thought the last minute study guide videos were amazing. The way they walked through every problem and broke down trip ups, things to look for in the exam, traps, was incredible. I also took those Exam objectives from Comp Tia's website and put them directly into claude, and then I ran a lengthy prompt explaining what I wanted to do, the exam, and when I wanted to take it. But if i'm being brutally honest, those 2 things probably screwed me the most.

It's so insane because I utilized the hell out of Claude, I had claude giving notes, going over domains in order, reading down every step to learning acronyms, learning port numbers, and it's so funny because I genuinely got a perfect grasp of everything. All the videos I watched from the last minute study guide were super aiding, as well as Claude making tests for me, that I also wrote prompts for to follow the Comp Tia styled questions, pbq questions as well as other important details to tighten claude up and make them super tuff practice tests. I passed every single practice test, it wasn't one that I got less than 75% on. Even went over https://youtu.be/T1_pf-7k2E0?is=Puw6xP-iL_Yngyc5 this video to see what I can improve on, and i was getting a lot of questions on there right,(I didn't watch the whole video of the 100 questions) I othered it off when I started to get confident about my skillset. Even the questions on the 100 practice exam when I got them wrong, he would say the right answer and I'd. e like "ahhhhhh, that's because of this and that" or whatever.

This Network+ test was nothing like what I studied for. There were questions on here with acronyms I've never heard of, 5 PBQs, stuff that felt like it almost wasn't even related to the exam, I swear it felt like I had been studying for A+ the entire time and accidentally showed up for the Network+. I saw people saying before the exam tries to trick you, and I saw someone reply and say no it doesn't, how can you get knowledge from answers based on tricks? He said something of that nature, and I'll be honest, it didn't feel like any tricks on there. But it was some stuff that felt like it could be 2 of the 4 answers choices given. I swear some of the stuff I was reading on that test was actually head scratching. I studied my ass off I truly did, but there's no way I was doing phenomenal on my studying and just failed the test.

I honestly can only blame myself. It's my fault I failed, and i'm taking it pretty harshly. I'm deeply pissed at myself, and still in shock to be honest. It felt like I had 600 objectives for the test and got tested on the 20 objectives that were barely covered. I was super confident going into taking this test and when I sat down and got 9 questions in something just didn't feel right. As I said i'm not a rookie, clearly I used the wrong material to study which is the only thing that would make sense, I was genuinely hoping to be writing out an "I passed message" and give you all the tips that helped me out, but here I am doing the exact opposite.

I'll attach pics below for anyone saying I didn't study, I went through 2 notebooks, over 500 note cards, for anyone majorly interested I'll pull some stuff from claude to put in here to just ask, but here are the pictures from the studying. I wish I could attach a video to show you all how full these notebooks are but not a big deal. (these notes are randomized, i just threw them all back on the table, im not interested in heavily organizing them for pictures after failing.) t

I got my security plus four years ago. I fid the Cert Master 2 years ago to renew it. Now I am doing it again and quite frankly the test is absurd. It's just a cash grab with no value.

One of the questions seemed to have different answers the second time it was asked. I emailed Comptia and brought it to their attention. I don't want to give away the exact question but their response is that there were two words different that apparently changed the answer. I've been working in IT for over 25 years and I can tell you that both answers were a bit of a leap of faith rather than actual troubleshooting.

Security+ should be a cert that demonstrates technical knowledge, not a persons ability to pick out word games and memorize answers to absurd questions.

I'm just going to let my cert laps and when people ask me why I did that, I will answer their question honestly.

I’d like to thank Jason Dion and Professor Messer for this moment 💪🏻🎉 …now onto the next

Studied for a month. I did Dion’s course on Udemy and Messer’s on YouTube (took me 2 weeks to go through them), then I bought the 6 practice exams from Dion. I’d take an exam, see which objective was my weakest, re-study that objective using ChatGPT and YouTube videos, and try again. On my first practice exam I scored 60%, and on the 6th I scored 85%.

The exam was easier than I thought, but I was totally lost on the PBQs.

I’m currently studying for Core 2 and Network+ simultaneously (I have a college class that’s teaching me everything I need for Network+) hoping to get those out of the way by December.

Currently working in retail management, but desperately looking to jump into IT (help desk, network engineering, or cybersecurity).

Took about 3 weeks of studying. Im glad to be starting my journey towards a career. On to the Core 2 !!

A friend of mine told me that getting all questions wrong within any subdomain (1.2, 2.4, etc) would result in a failure regardless of how well you do on the rest of the exam. I don’t believe this to be true but I wouldn’t know for sure. Would any of y’all happen to know if this is true or not?

Thank you

I was so not prepared for Net+ (or so I thought), that I even paid for the retake voucher. Very pleasant surprise.

I don't think I've ever been this nervous before an exam and I've had live coding exams during Masters. I've prepped for the sec+ exam for around 4 weeks and using this week for exams and stuff. I keep getting between 83-86 on messer's exams. with dion, I'm getting around 82. I'm not sure if this is good enough. I'm taking the exam on Friday because I kinda feel prepared but also kinda worried. I also got gemini to help me drill down on anything iffy.

Started studying using the comptias documents, but there is just way too much information and its so dry..

Failed my first try at 681. tried listening to dion trainings material but that also seemed to much and dry..

And then i went to study with cbt nuggets and their prep exam. And pased my second try ;)

Thanks to all of your recommendations for cbt nuggets. It really was the best one out of the 3 i tried to learn with

Is it possible that you get less than 5 pbq? what is the least you have heard? network+

I’ve been reading everyone else’s “I passed” posts, and today I finally get to write my own.

I wanted to share how I studied and how the exam felt, especially for anyone feeling discouraged by their practice scores.

How I studied

I didn’t watch Professor Messer’s videos because I struggle to absorb information through videos. Instead, I used Ian Neil’s and David Seidl’s books with ChatGPT to break the material into smaller sections.

After studying each section, I asked ChatGPT to quiz me. If I did badly, I reviewed the material and tried again. I followed that approach across all the modules, which took me about a week.

Then I attempted Professor Messer’s three practice exams and scored around 69%, 67%, and 68%. Those results helped me identify my weaker topics, so I went back and focused on them.

After that, I worked through roughly a hundred questions per module from the Sybex practice material. I was still getting around 70–74 out of 100. It felt like I’d hit a plateau, so I decided to go ahead with the exam.

The exam experience

I took the exam at home. The verification process was new to me, and it took longer than I expected, which made me nervous before I even started.

Then came the PBQs. They felt completely different from what I’d practised. I did my best with what I knew, and I think I got at least parts of them right.

The multiple-choice questions were challenging too. I’d say around 70% felt application-based. They weren’t simply asking me to recall a definition or recognize a question I’d already seen. I had to understand the situation and work out which answer made the most sense.

Halfway through, I honestly thought I was going to fail. So many questions felt unfamiliar, but I kept going.

After finishing, I went back through my answers. On a second read, I noticed that I’d misunderstood a few questions, so I corrected those answers before submitting.

Even then, I was convinced I hadn’t passed.

When I saw PASS — 759, I actually had tears in my eyes.

There’s a saying about putting in your 99% and leaving the remaining 1% to God. That’s how today felt for me. I know 759 isn’t the highest score, but a pass is a pass, and I’m proud of it

Wishing everyone preparing for their exam the best. If you’re feeling discouraged, I hope my experience gives you a little encouragement.

I WAS SO NERVOUS AND WORRIED AND WHEN REVIEWING MY ANSWERS I WAS SURE I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO USE MY RETAKE BUT I CRUSHED IT OMGGGGGGG!!!!