It certainly wasn't an A+ exam, it was a piddly little Microsoft Certified Professional exam for 2000 server and XP, or something like that.

The reason I got by on studying the exams instead of the material is because I'd taken similar exams before and knew how they worked. They quiz you on crap like what the exact command line parameters are to ipconfig (what, like I can't type "/?", sheesh). So I mostly knew the material and just needed to know the fine details of what I was gonna get tested on. Anything I didn't know, I looked up or figured out by messing with the product being quizzed, then went back and took the test again. And yes, the practice exams had very similar questions to the real thing.

I dunno what all is involved in an A+ cert, so I don't know if this method would work or not.