Spent about 7 weeks on this one, roughly 2 hours a day after work. The exam has shifted much more toward Intune-heavy scenarios than older resources suggest, so if you're relying on pre-2023 materials you're going to run into questions that feel totally unfamiliar. At least 40% of what I saw was Intune configuration and compliance policy content.
Windows Autopilot is important and a lot of people underestimate it. I saw maybe 6–7 questions directly touching on deployment profiles, hybrid Azure AD join, and enrollment status pages. Know the difference between user-driven and self-deploying modes cold — that distinction shows up in scenario questions frequently.
I built a lab using Windows 11 VMs and a free Intune trial tenant, which was probably the best prep decision I made. Reading about compliance policies is one thing, but actually creating a configuration profile and watching it push to a device makes the material stick differently. If you're short on time, at minimum watch hands-on demo videos for the Autopilot and co-management sections.
Final week I did about 3 hours a day targeting areas where my mock scores were weakest. Came into test day averaging 82% on practice sets, ended up with an 847. The real exam felt slightly harder on Update Management than practice sets suggested.
7 weeks at 2 hours a day is about what I did too. The Update Management section always feels underprepared no matter how much time you put in — those scenario questions are just harder to study for than the rest.
Good call on the lab. I used a free Intune developer tenant and it changed how I understood co-management. The theory makes way more sense once you've actually clicked through the enrollment settings yourself.
The Intune shift is real. I failed MD-101 last year studying from older AZ-103-style notes and the exam felt like a different cert entirely. Rebuilt my prep around current Intune docs and passed second attempt with an 831.
How many questions were on Windows 365 and Cloud PCs? I've seen conflicting info about how much weight that section carries on the current exam version.
Just hit 83% on my last practice run, so I'm feeling pretty good about sitting the real thing in about two weeks. I've been spending most of my time on co-management scenarios specifically because I kept missing those in earlier mocks, and this set of md 101/questions/co management with microsoft endpoint configuration manager questions really helped me nail down the decision points. Wasn't clicking for me before but now it is.
Congrats on the 847 by the way, that's a solid score. Your point about pre-2023 materials is spot on, I wasted probably a week on older content before I realized the Intune weighting had shifted so much. If you're prepping now just go straight to the modern stuff and don't look back.
Honestly the best thing I did was drill wrong answers. Not just flagging them and moving on -- I'd sit with each one and ask myself exactly why it was wrong, not just "because the other one was right." That clicked for me especially with co-management scenarios, which tripped me up early on. There's a solid breakdown at md 101/questions/co management with microsoft endpoint configuration manager that helped me understand the workload sliders and when Configuration Manager authority actually applies versus when Intune takes over. Once I stopped pattern-matching and started understanding the logic behind each distractor, my practice scores jumped fast.
The Intune-heavy shift is real. If you've been spending most of your time on Group Policy stuff, I'd rebalance now. It wasn't that GP knowledge was useless, but it's mostly there to set up contrast questions where knowing the Intune equivalent is what actually gets you the point. I didn't use any materials older than late 2023 and I'd say that was probably the single best decision I made going into this one.
Failed my first attempt back in March and honestly it wasn't even close. I'd been grinding old MCSA-era practice dumps and went in completely unprepared for how scenario-heavy the co-management questions had gotten. Second time I shifted almost everything to hands-on Intune labs and spent a lot of time on stuff like md 101/questions/co management with microsoft endpoint configuration manager 3 which really hammered home the ConfigMgr integration side I'd been glossing over.
The thing that actually moved the needle was treating every question like a real deployment decision instead of just pattern matching to an answer. If you failed once already don't get discouraged, it's a different exam than it used to be and the right material makes a huge difference.
Congrats on the score! Seriously, 847 is no joke. I'm in a similar boat, studying in the evenings after the kids go to bed, and I've found that consistency matters way more than cramming long sessions. I wasn't able to sit down for three-hour blocks so I just did 45 minutes to an hour most nights and it actually stuck better that way.
The Intune shift you mentioned is real and I'm glad you called it out. I started with some older material and it felt like I was studying a different exam. Once I pivoted to hands-on stuff in the portal and focused on policy sets, compliance policies, and conditional access scenarios, things started clicking. If you haven't actually touched a trial tenant and just worked through docs, you're going to struggle. The scenarios they throw at you aren't super tricky but they assume you've actually seen the UI.
Just hit 82% on my last practice run so feeling pretty good heading into the real thing — I've got it booked for next Friday. The Intune scenarios are no joke, I spent a whole weekend just on co-management stuff and honestly it's where I was bleeding the most points early on. If you haven't gone through md 101/questions/co management with microsoft endpoint configuration manager 3 yet I'd prioritize it, it clicked a lot of things together for me that the study guides kind of glossed over.
Wasn't expecting the conditional access questions to show up as much as they did in practice either but I'm feeling way more confident now. Good luck to everyone else still grinding through it.