Please help a beginner!

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Hello from sunny Devon!

I'm totally new to this forum, and thanks to Freeloader and others, have recently decided to look at doing some courses off my own bat:
Can anyone help? I use PC's on a daily basis with work, and have previously worked as troubleshooter on an outdated national system on a local basis.
i want to head down the route of trouble shooting within the IT industry, and was advised by a guy at NITLC (who used to work for Computeach!) that i would probably be best placed in a PC/Desktop/Software Support role.
so here (at last!) is my question: what qualifications do i need to look for to go in to this area, and where could i get details of which books/software etc to get started - I'm very much a beginner, but am bright and very keen to plough in to it as quickly as possible!
if i get on with it all then i may well sign up to a distance learning program at a later date, but for now, taking the advice that was well posted, I will save the few grand and see how I get on with it myself. Any & all help very greatly appreciated - wish I'd known about this forum before I got stuck between NITLC and Computeach!!

 

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Glad to hear we saved you some money and heartache. It makes the time and effort expended in posting worth it.

Now, as to the route you want to take.... When you say troubleshooting, just exactly what do you mean by that? What area of troubleshooting do you want to enter? Just about any area in IT involves troubleshooting so I'm rather confused as to exactly what you're interested in. To tell the truth, I can't think of any area in IT that doesn't include troubleshooting.

 

Welcome BriH!

 

Greetings, BriH. Welcome to CertForums. I agree with Freddy...troubleshooting is part and parcel in the IT field. At one time or another, just about any part of the technology gets broken and needs someone to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. Just depends on which area of IT really floats your boat.

 

welcome to the forums mate!

 

Hi there.

Have you looked at MCDST?
It seems to be one of Microsoft's most popular courses.
Depends what you want really.

 

Thanks guys for all your input!
With no depth to my knowledge of the whole IT "arena", was thinking along the lines of something that could give my a solid grounding, a foundation if you like, from which I could hopefully make a more informed decision as to which direction to take!?

Where would I look up MCDST? - would the Microsoft site be a good place to start maybe..?? (See - said I was a beginner!!)

I don't want to go into websites and maintenance, building of sites and all that malarkey, I think my strengths would lie in desk top applications (Excel, Access etc) and that sort of thing - dunno really, any pointers will be good. This industry is very much the future and I'm itching to get in to it - I know if I don't do something soon I'll be too damn old to start learning!!!

Thanks again to all!

 

Hi Bri. Welcome to CF.

If it is a foundation course then look no further than Comptia A+ cert.

 

Hey Bri - try our MOS or MCDST boards for specific info on application support

 

From what I have been told, and read in countless threads in this place, it seems like the two main entry qualifications for any role in IT are A+ and N+ in that order. After that you will be in a position to decide how you would prefer to specialise beyond the basics these qualifications would provide.

If this interests you, check out the A+ forum http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=29 and sift your way through various threads that cover aspects of this course such as what resources to use, different ways of studying, etc..

Good luck with whatever you deicde to do and welcome to CF!

 

Good luck from me too!

From what you have said, it sounds to me like you should look closely at the links Jakomoko posted, they seem to suit you quite well IMHO