Pearson onscreen platform installation woes

[mullet_man]

What happened when you pressed alt shift f12?

[6Foot2]

What happened when you pressed alt shift f12?

 

Nothing (it didn't help)

 

I am now going down the route of a complete re-install. However, this is throwing up a new problem. Specifically:

 

 

I have seen this one before, but I can't remember the fix.

 

Thinking...

[6Foot2]

I have just tried exactly the same install at several stations. It failed at all but one. I am now going to wait until everyone is on site (about half an hour) and go through the install again at some other stations to see if we can spot what is different (working vs not working)

[Tefters]

What OS is this on?

And do you have Dot Net 3.5 install as I think that was a pre-requisite?

[6Foot2]

What OS is this on?

And do you have Dot Net 3.5 install as I think that was a pre-requisite?

 

Windows 7 Pro: SP1: 64 Bit.

 

.Net is required for other stuff that does not give us a problem at the moment.

 

Edit: This version requires .Net 4.5. Our stations have 4.6 enabled. This should cover any requirements for 4.5 (I think?) Either way after the install it always prompts for a required component to be installed (Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable) If there were other requirements not installed It should prompt for them or give an error message to indicate the missing component.

 

Edited January 4, 2017 by 6Foot2

[mullet_man]

Have you tried to rename the rebuilt invilgator pc to the previous name? So you can get through the tests and then fix the issue at a later date?

[6Foot2]

Have you tried to rename the rebuilt invilgator pc to the previous name? So you can get through the tests and then fix the issue at a later date?

I had thought about it, but I wanted to avoid doing that as I believe that we have more Pearson tests coming up and that approach only puts off the pain. It is now when I have time to dedicate to solving this.

[6Foot2]

The problem is now 'solved' we all went down to the room in question and tried the install at all of the non-working stations. Many did not work. We did the install again at the stations where it failed until it did work. We now have about 94% of the station up and running. Easily good enough to run the exam next week.

 

Now all we need to to is get the exams officer in to run the dummy exam to make sure that she is happy with it all.

 

[mullet_man]

Glad it's mostly sorted! [emoji106]

[6Foot2]

Glad it's mostly sorted! [emoji106]

Me too!

[dgrinnell27]

Hi Guys,

 

New here but have been reading through many posts in this thread and others about Pearson POP.

 

Im basically in charge of the exam software at my work (college) and Ive had to recently upgrade an Invigilator PC.

 

I have re-installed the dashboard on that PC and even re-installed ALL the clients in that room to point to the new PC..

 

However it wont auto discover? Nothin on the network has changed, VLAN's, Ports etc.

 

Its annoying because the current fix ive found is to launch test player as a local admin, then manually add the Invigilator PC to start the test... Not great if you have an exam of 20 machines -_-

Pearson haven't seen this issue before and have no idea... Great.

 

Has anyone else had this problem? Any help would be much appreciated!!

 

Dan

[Sam_Brown]

I never relied on the auto discover. Found it flakey. We just had a generic "exams" account that we logged on to all the computers and configured it first time manually so when the students used it was already set.

 

If we had to change the location of the invigilator machines then we just created a new account "exams2" and did the same thing. Right ball ache was ended up being less time consuming then troubleshooting the software.

 

Question - How many exams do you generally have running at a time? We just had the invigilator console installed on the server with the exams admin console and just let the invigilators connect to that. Makes life a lot easier.

[dgrinnell27]

I never relied on the auto discover. Found it flakey. We just had a generic "exams" account that we logged on to all the computers and configured it first time manually so when the students used it was already set.

 

If we had to change the location of the invigilator machines then we just created a new account "exams2" and did the same thing. Right ball ache was ended up being less time consuming then troubleshooting the software.

 

Question - How many exams do you generally have running at a time? We just had the invigilator console installed on the server with the exams admin console and just let the invigilators connect to that. Makes life a lot easier.

Think I may have solved this since my post this AM

 

I just manually set the Invigilator on each machine when logged in as the exam account using the ALT+SHIFT+F12 option.

 

We can have up to 40 exams at once and we have multiple exam rooms which connect to the Invigilator PC in each room.

 

Its because we have an Exam dept and they log into each Invigilator PC in each room to run the exam. Weird set-up I know but its legacy and here before I started.

 

So does the admin console connect to the invigilator console? What I think they are concerned about is users having access to a server.

 

Thanks for your reply!

[dhoward_westexetc]

Hi Guys,

 

New here but have been reading through many posts in this thread and others about Pearson POP.

 

Im basically in charge of the exam software at my work (college) and Ive had to recently upgrade an Invigilator PC.

 

I have re-installed the dashboard on that PC and even re-installed ALL the clients in that room to point to the new PC..

 

However it wont auto discover? Nothin on the network has changed, VLAN's, Ports etc.

 

Its annoying because the current fix ive found is to launch test player as a local admin, then manually add the Invigilator PC to start the test... Not great if you have an exam of 20 machines -_-

Pearson haven't seen this issue before and have no idea... Great.

 

Has anyone else had this problem? Any help would be much appreciated!!

 

Dan

 

I had this myself. If you look at my post 33 on this thread http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/124240-pearson-onscreen-platform-installation-woes-3.html#post1091267 you'll see my solution, which basically involves configuring one machine per room, then taking the config files and storing them centrally. Deploy to the relevant system using group policy preferences and loopback, but only applying to the exam accounts. GPOs assigned to the computer OU, hence the need for loopback. Worked for us for 3 years.

[dgrinnell27]

Me too!

Update for this guys...

 

The issue is in the %username%\APPDATA\LOCAL\TDPClientDATA folder.

 

Delete everything from there and it works... We had the same issue.

[googlemad]

I have been requested to install the Practice Test Player in a classroom as available here

 

https://btecng.pearson.com/btecng/Demo/Edi.Advance.Tdp.SamplePlayer.Setup.msi

 

However, when I run that on a 64 Bit W7 workstation it goes through the motions of installing and creates a bunch of files in Program Files (x86) but then no desktop / start menu shortcuts and if I try to run the executable in the Program Files folder it just comes up with some weird error!

 

Any ideas?

[dgrinnell27]

Whats the error?

[googlemad]

 

That is running C:\Program Files (x86)\Pearson\SamplePlayer\TPO.exe

[dgrinnell27]

This has happened to us sometimes, either run the test as an admin (right click).

 

Or delete the entries from: C:\users\%username%\AppData\Local\TDPClientData

 

Then re-launch, it should work then.

[6Foot2]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]40894[/ATTACH]

 

That is running C:\Program Files (x86)\Pearson\SamplePlayer\TPO.exe

 

We saw the same error earlier this month. We were able to fix it by uninstalling Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable (the item that demands to be installed after Test Player is installed) I had my doubts but it worked for us, almost as if the computer 'thought' that there were two copies of Microsoft Visual C++ 2012 Redistributable installed.

 

Could be worth a try?

[googlemad]

I found out this morning if I simply click 'No' to that error message it does the 'TPO.exe' has stopped working in the normal Windows 7 way, then if you simply launch it again it works! So that makes a lot of sense

[googlemad]

I got a response back from Pearson about these mythical 'retired tests' and it makes things a lot more clear, in that it isn't designed to have any shortcuts or be run manually and faffing about with - once installed it just associates itself with the practice files available on various courses on their website (.pkgx)

 

One is available from the following if you ever need it for testing purposes!

 

http://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/BTEC-Firsts/Business/2012/Specification-and-sample-assessments/Unit-2-Sample-assessment-material.zip

[Latham]

I can't remember if it's been brought up (I think it has) but does using the same account with multiple logins and a roaming profile on a server work? We use local profiles on machines and we have to keep selecting the whiteboard with the invigilator software on it but it does work...some times.

 

I was just wary of having around 40 students trying to use the software all saving temp data in the same place.

[6Foot2]

I can't remember if it's been brought up (I think it has) but does using the same account with multiple logins and a roaming profile on a server work? We use local profiles on machines and we have to keep selecting the whiteboard with the invigilator software on it but it does work...some times...

We have used this scenario in testing and it worked. But we have never done this when the students have been taking their tests. So I guess my answer is I think it would work but, as we haven't tested this set up 'in anger' I would not like to give a definitive 'yes'

[ozydave]

I would loved to be able to swear on this forum. Pearson just makes my blood boil. They should not be let anywhere need software