Have you been trying to register for 83-640? Had some problems? You’re not alone. Unfortunately, we are experiencing some problems with the registration process for this exam and are working fast and furious to correct them. Here’s what we know:
· The problems are intermittent, meaning some people can register successfully while others cannot.
· The problems seem to be tied to peak registration periods, which vary from day to day, meaning that if you happen to try to register during one of these peak periods, you’re more likely to encounter problems.
· Tests indicate that if you’re scheduling an exam more than 3 months from now, you are less likely to encounter problems; you are more likely to encounter problems when scheduling exams 3 days to 3 months from now. Of course, as I said, the problems are intermittent and unpredictable, so no guarantees based on these results, but this may help from a planning perspective.
What should you do if you experience problems with registration?
If you are unable to schedule to take this exam, please contact Prometric customer service for the latest status and resolution of the issue. Beginning Monday, May 10, if the problem hasn’t been resolved, when you contact Prometric, they will ask for your name and email address and will contact you via email directly once the issue has been resolved.
Remember the problems are intermittent…If you can handle the possible frustration, you can also continue trying to register…you could be one of the lucky ones. I will post updates to Born to Learn as they become available. You can also contact mslcd@microsoft.com if you would like to be notified by me via email when the problem has been resolved.
Alas, the roll-out of any innovative exam delivery platform, such as this one, isn’t always unicorns and ponies. We will run into glitches along the way. Simply know that we are working as quickly as we can to correct them and to ensure a positive experience for everyone involved. We believe this is the next generation of certification testing and are fully committed to investing time and effort to create a performance based testing solution that allows our candidates to demonstrate what they know through a hands-on testing experience. Thanks for continuing to stay with us on this journey of delivering the first world-wide performance based IT certification exam.
Thank's for sharing the information.hoping the issue will get fixed asap.
This really is unacceptable.
How can you release a broken exam to the whole world (English only) and then sit back and allow test takers to suffer the pain they are suffering?
AFAIK the problem is not registering exam (though there are problems if you ask the customer helpline to do it for you) the REAL problems are in taking the test itself - the emulation labs suffer really bad latency and can eventually drop out. Reconnecting is hit and miss, some re-connect, others fail and the candidate cannot complete the exam.
We hear from Prometric that the problem is affecting 1 in 10 exam sittings. Please can you advise if this10% figure is correct from your perspective - I have personal experience of seeing it affect 40-80% of candidates over the last 30 days (data from 18 x 83-640 tests taken). BTW I am a test center manager, not a test taker.
Why don't you simply re-instate the 70-640 exam until you iron out the problems?
OUCH that one hurts1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9 do we hear 10 before MS will answer back? When I did the beta between christmas and newyear i waisted 3 hours before I gave up doe to exam not loading. So to hear from a test center manger that it still is not fixed stinks.
Hi All, I hear your pain.
Here is the transcript of a recent customer service triumph for Prometric/Microsoft:
<snip>
>Prometric Suport: xxxxxxx, this is your ticket number. Please provide this to the candidates and tell them to get in touch with candidate care for the rescheduale of the exam.
>Test Center:
give it to ALL the 3 , the same ticket?
>Prometric Suport: xxxxxxx
Yes..
Becouse all of their details are in the same ticket.
this is the 2nd time these 3 have tried to take this exam. what do I tell them if they ask if it will work next time?
Is this a fault of Microsoft or do you think Prometric?
I am afraid i am not in a position to advice you on that.
Its the linking and communication of servers between both parties.
i see, so a bit of both?
Is there anything else I could assist you with?
no
Have a good day them
sigh
I have problems with registering for 83-640.
Why can't I take 70-640 instead.
If this system is not working then it should NOT have been rolled out!
Basic common sense!!!
Seriously, I use MS "dog food" every day, however, I have to say that time and time again this goes to prove MS sucks, they can't even make their tests work right, no wonder the OS'es they release are so damned riddled with bugs. MS - if you can't do it right, don't do it at all!
this is potentially a good idea, but not thought through, and very frustrating.
what do you do when you've seen 8 people work hard all week in a classroom, to watch them go into an exam room, sit there for 45 mins trying to connect to a server that wont let them on, then come back the following week for more of the same.
the test centre admin was on the phone for 2.5 hours to prometric tech support and really got nowhere with this.
responsibility needs to be taken, and quickly.
it's all too easy to finger point, and Prometric blame MS and vice-versa.
This is no way to rollout a new exam technology.
MS testing needs to lead the world, not be a laughing stock when some technologies cant be brought together.
short-term fix: re-instate the old format so at least folks get to actually take the exam.
long-term: do some testing on this and get prometric on board, they seem very relaxed about the problem as if it's not their doing in any part.
Hello,
I did not have issues reigistering for the exam, but I went to take the exam this weekend and it kept crashing. Prometric ended up telling the manager that I should reschedule because they were not able to fix the problem. Can you please advise if this is a issue with all prometric testing centers?
Look at the bright side, guys...once they figure out how to do this on 83-640, any future simulation exams should be relatively painless to roll out.
Either that, or they'll never roll out any more simulation exams.
I did a little research so I can provide some initial feedback on these comments. The 10% figure is a global average. For each specific testing center, the failure rate may be higher or lower, as various local variables (e.g., client and firewall configurations that don't meet system requirements to deliver this exam) could contribute to the issue. If a test center is experiencing an extremely high failure rate, please report it to (or continue to work with) Prometric Global Help Desk so that they can work with you to identify the cause and resolution.
Note that we have addressed the firewall issue and are currently working on a process to detect which machines require updated configurations. We also continue to work the registration issue.
Interesting update Liberty - effectively I think you are saying it affects only 10% of test centers and you are saying any deviation to this average is all the fault of the test centres?
It seems you have heard from the Prometric spin machine and not reached out to any test centers. Feel free to reach out to me!
How can your explanation of localised "fault" hold true? - we have multiple identical machines which are used for Prometric testing. On any testing day, the machine is selected at random (for the test taker to sit at) - recently we had 5 testing on this 640 exam and 2 proceeded ok, and 3 crashed and burned. The fault cannot therefore be our firewall - since this is shared by all PCs. It cannot be the PCs as they are all identical, and re-imaged prior to the test delivery. Finally it is not the "test center" because our Prometric level 2/3 tech confirmed all was ok and our internet bandwidth was 10x the required minimum.
I note that your original post simply blamed the "registration" process and made no reference to the failure of the labs to connect to the hosted virtual machines. Please can you dig a little deeper.
We are in the UK - please try to find out what the UK average failure figure is?
I hear in Sweden it is 75% fail. Can you confirm?
I support the call here from your customers to re-instate the old exam, or increase the capacity of the servers hosting the VMs until we get through to the end of June?
Many thanks
Andrew
The best question is: What MSL failures tell us about MS Exams value?
I do not remember month where there wasn't any failure done by MSL. All those people should be looking for new jobs.
LAST MONTH PROMETRIC SCORE CONTAINED WELCOME KIT PROMISE - nine months after discontinuing it. LOL^ROTFL^PATETIC.
Don't expect valuable certificates/exams from team that isn't able to update simple text in 9 months of time. Those PPL aren't responsible for anything - it is like kindergarden not like bln of $ company.
Steve Ballmer please send flying chairs to this team.
In Ukraine you can't register to this exam because testing centers are scared with negative experience with this exam, and don't want lose money due to design failures. Only one agrees to do this exam but at your risk, if exam hangs you may again to reschedule exam by paying again. I has read on local forum that man was successful only at the third try.
In France, since one week, i cannot register to this exam. Prometric told me that it's a problem from Microsoft ... I don't understand why it's so long to correct a problem with all technologies provided by MS : Cluster, NLB, DNS Round robin etc ...
Or why MS does not return back with old exam version, without VM and BUGS ?
Hmmm... this is starting to feel like you want to kill the messenger. Unfortunately, I don't have any first hand knowledge of the specific issues that are causing the problems. I only know and am sharing what the team is finding in their investigation because I wanted to be transparent about the fact that we know we have some issues and we're working on them. It wasn't my intention to imply that all failures that deviate from the worldwide average of 10% were the fault of the test center configurations. The examples I provided were examples of known issues that we've found cause the majority of problems. If you are continuing to have problems at a particular test center, we need you to start the conversation with Prometric so that these issues can be escalated and resolved, which will also help us identify other root causes for the issues.
I will keep you posted as I learn more.