ExamWritePad

[Wubbalubbadub]

Just to jump onto this. Has anyone got this successfully working with Intune Joined, devices?

[ass17]

Just to jump onto this. Has anyone got this successfully working with Intune Joined, devices?

 

Can’t see any reason why, if you deploy MSI files then this should be no different.

[ass17]

Just to jump onto this. Has anyone got this successfully working with Intune Joined, devices?

 

You can also convert the MSI to an intune package following these instructions.

 

http:// https://www.anoopcnair.com/intune-win32-app-deployment/

[Wubbalubbadub]

Done that, just trying to work out how to deploy the settings/config

[ass17]

Done that, just trying to work out how to deploy the settings/config

 

Two options:

 

1) The config is configured and supplied within your deployment intune file.

 

Disadvantage: to change a config option, you would have to rebuild the intune package and redeploy or script the config to be copied to your PCs.

 

2) Deploy the intune package with no config. Configure the config on a central server UNC location. Then the the shortcut to run EWP on each client PC will contain the /CONFIG parameter to the network config file.

[Tjhurr]

Hi Andy,

 

Nice one. Set "Setting_Name": "MuteSystemAudio" to zero. Seems to have cured.

 

Cheers,

 

Tim

[ass17]

Hi Andy,

 

Nice one. Set "Setting_Name": "MuteSystemAudio" to zero. Seems to have cured.

 

Cheers,

 

Tim

Obviously this means that the sound will be enabled but you could mute sound via the Group Policy or via another method than relying on EWP to mute on start-up.

 

Ultimately I would prefer to help you resolve the issue so that the feature works as expected but if you are happy for now with "MuteSystemAudio" set to zero then who am I to complain :-)

Edited March 30, 2021 by ass17

[ass17]

Hi All,

 

Just a quick update, been busy thrashing out the bugs, and new version now available.

 

· FIXED: ‘SizeSelection’ combo box would throw an exception on start-up causing some remaining code unable to execute.

 

· FIXED: Debugging information would be posted twice in the log file, in most instances based on some coding issues.

 

· ADDED: More debugging information has been added to the start-up process to better understand where failures may occur, when diagnosing issues.

 

· FIXED: ‘Create_PowerStatus_TimersThreadsHandlers’ has been moved from the ‘New’ Subroutine to the ‘form load’ subroutine to try to mitigate any issues that may arise from its failure to load successfully.

 

· FIXED: Removed older code commented out, no longer required.

 

· FIXED: EWP will now rollback to a default value for any config option that has been set to blank unnecessarily, when it needed a value set. For example, a 0 or 1. Previously EWP would fail to load any remaining config options if it hit such an issue.

 

· FIXED: IF you turn on USBMonitoring, and the USBMonitoring .exe is not located in the same folder as EWP, it will stop EWP appearing and terminate.

 

· FIXED: When turning on the config option “MuteAudio”, The form referred to itself during construction from a default instance, which led to infinite recursion causing the system audio not to be muted. The Mute Audio has been moved To the Form Load event to stop this from happening and mute the system audio as expected.

 

· FIXED: When opening an existing file from the splashscreen, it would fire the document modified Save file dialog first. This has now been suppressed.

 

· FIXED: Documentation Window cursor did not change to a hand on mouse over the close button to keep it consistent with the rest of EWP.

 

· FIXED: When disabling the splashscreen, the application would not close when you exit or click on ‘X’ control box.

 

· FIXED: No previous history would be displayed if the BackupPath was specified as C: for example, therefore a backslash has been appended to make it function correctly. This is an issue with the Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.FileSystem.GetFiles method.

 

· FIXED: ‘DefaultOpenPath’ was never assign to the Open File Dialog Control as the initial directory to look in for an existing file to open.

 

 

Update your copy of EWP via the website, built-in updater or via the links in my signature below.

[mobrien]

Hello Andy,

 

I wonder if you can help? We have just come across EWP as a solution to problems we are having with blocking up Office 365 and then it not being able to license as a result.

 

However, we've come across a snag. We can install/deploy EWP fine, and implement a custom json (we have only set the Centre name and no. at present). However, we simply can't get EWP to launch. We tried the original config and that has the same problem. It shows in task manager then disappears.

 

System setup:

Windows 10 20H2, no other software installed, clean build.

 

Things we've tried:

Clean build install

Install pre-win update

install post-winupdate

Run in compatibility mode.

 

Many more, but nothing seems to get it off the ground. I also saw something about mute audio in the config, but this is already set by default.

 

Hope you can help

[ass17]

Hello Andy,

 

I wonder if you can help? We have just come across EWP as a solution to problems we are having with blocking up Office 365 and then it not being able to license as a result.

 

However, we've come across a snag. We can install/deploy EWP fine, and implement a custom json (we have only set the Centre name and no. at present). However, we simply can't get EWP to launch. We tried the original config and that has the same problem. It shows in task manager then disappears.

 

System setup:

Windows 10 20H2, no other software installed, clean build.

 

Things we've tried:

Clean build install

Install pre-win update

install post-winupdate

Run in compatibility mode.

 

Many more, but nothing seems to get it off the ground. I also saw something about mute audio in the config, but this is already set by default.

 

Hope you can help

 

Welcome to EWP!

 

First of all can I ask as to whether you have deployed/installed the required Microsoft[emoji2400] Visual C++ 2013 Runtime (x64) 12.0.40.664 as stated in the documentation?

 

https://aka.ms/highdpimfc2013x64enu

 

Regards

Andy

[mobrien]

Welcome to EWP!

 

First of all can I ask as to whether you have deployed/installed the required Microsoft[emoji2400] Visual C++ 2013 Runtime (x64) 12.0.40.664 as stated in the documentation?

 

https://aka.ms/highdpimfc2013x64enu

 

Regards

Andy

 

Hello Andy,

 

We have now - and it seems to have solved it! Many thanks,

 

Michael

[prestech]

Hi

where does the Msi install to

 

Thank you

[ass17]

Hi

where does the Msi install to

 

Thank you

 

C:\Program Files

[prestech]

Hi

 

Not all of the students works is saving i.e they have answered 17 questions but only answer 16 & 17 were saved and I have got auobackup and auto saved setup to because even when you tell a student to save in the right place and to saved when the type in an answer they dont. also the program crashes alot

[ass17]

Hi

 

Not all of the students works is saving i.e they have answered 17 questions but only answer 16 & 17 were saved and I have got auobackup and auto saved setup to because even when you tell a student to save in the right place and to saved when the type in an answer they dont. also the program crashes alot

 

Hi,

 

I think first of all I have to say this because it’s been said to me before and I have had a single instance of it myself. Pupils will try there best to use the system to their advantage by suggestions things aren’t working properly, thus giving them a free ride in the exam. Now, to balance things out, this is not 99.99% of people who do use technology to assist with exams. But you cannot rule it out, is what I’m saying.

 

Now onto further questions to probe this a little deeper:

 

Is this happening on all PCs running EWP?

 

Where are the backups and students saving the work to? Local Disk or Network?

 

Who do the backups look every minute? Do the look as if they are doing the work and suddenly, things disappear? Any patterns?

 

In terms of crashes, can you elaborate?

 

What Are the system specs. Of these PCs?

 

Do you have Debug Application turned on in the config? If so what does the log say?

 

Are there any Windows event logs created for the crashes?

 

I’ve used it on my personal laptop with no issues when writing for over an hour. So hopefully I can help you if you can supply as much information as possible please :-)

 

Also as a footnote, don’t tell the pupils to always save, let EWP do the saving automatically then it’s one less thing for the pupils to do and think about. We always turn on the option to force save after candidate info window. Then they are free to work away with the knowledge that there work is saved for them automatically.

Edited April 16, 2021 by ass17

[prestech]

We are running EWP version 4.3.0.0.0

HP Compaq 4000 Pro SFF Microsoft Windows 10 Education RAM 4 GB Processor Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E5800 @ 3.20GHz

The problem saving work that turns out to be blank is random.

Where are the backups and students saving the work to? Local Disk or Network? we are running RM CC4 so student works is saved on network in their N:\username forlder.

I have set backup to save in N:\username\Backup

Who do the backups look every minute? autobackupinterval: 60000

Autosaveinterval: 1000

[ass17]

We are running EWP version 4.3.0.0.0

HP Compaq 4000 Pro SFF Microsoft Windows 10 Education RAM 4 GB Processor Pentium® Dual-Core CPU E5800 @ 3.20GHz

The problem saving work that turns out to be blank is random.

Where are the backups and students saving the work to? Local Disk or Network? we are running RM CC4 so student works is saved on network in their N:\username forlder.

I have set backup to save in N:\username\Backup

Who do the backups look every minute? autobackupinterval: 60000

Autosaveinterval: 1000

 

Ok, the only thing that strikes me as way too low is the auto save interval, where 1000 is the fact you are asking EWP to save every second so no wonder it crashes, I would recommend 60000 (1 minute) as the minimum.

[sonofsanta]

First up--finally got round to using this in place of WordPad after years of meaning to, and it's wonderful. Nice clean interface, lots of configurability, every option we need. The exam boards should be paying you for providing this, seeing as they're the ones coming up with all the daft requirements that WordPad can't fulfill!

 

I'm just trying to wrap my head around batch conversion to PDF for all the files in a folder, but it keeps throwing an error and generally acting weirdly. I'm going from the final command on page 34 of the documentation, albeit tweaked to reference Adobe PDF as the printer i.e.

.\ExamWritePad.exe /FOLDER:"G:\DUMP\examFiles" /PRINT:"Adobe PDF" /COPIES:"1"

 

Say I have three files in the folder. For the first one, it'll open EWP and then pop up an error dialog saying

We were unable to gather a list of supported paper sizes from the selected printer - Printing Aborted

 

I click Close on that, then I get

The document paper size is not compatible with the selected printer.

 

Please change the paper size so you can print this document.

 

After closing that one, it then prompts me to save the second and third PDFs--i.e. it's skipped the first file--but when I open the PDFs, it's just printed a blank page with the header & footer but none of the actual exam script. Even weirder, the header it prints is from the first (skipped) file for all the PDFs it does save, e.g. student2.pdf and student3.pdf both have student 1's data in the header and a single blank page. (student1.pdf doesn't exist at all.)

 

I've checked the Adobe PDF settings in Printer Preferences and it is set to A4 as default, and the .EXAMTEXT files in question are set to A4 (I assume that's default anyway?), so I'm not sure where the mismatch is coming from. Certainly I can open the file manually and print to Adobe PDF without changing any settings. I've tried opening EWP first to see if that wakes it up and gets it to check its settings, but that doesn't seem to change anything.

 

All the behaviour I've described above holds true if I change Adobe PDF to a physical printer, too--the error messages, and the erroneous content of the pages it does print, so it doesn't seem to be related to the device settings.

 

Where am I going wrong? This is version 4.5.3.0 installed locally on Win10 1903.

[ass17]

First up--finally got round to using this in place of WordPad after years of meaning to, and it's wonderful. Nice clean interface, lots of configurability, every option we need. The exam boards should be paying you for providing this, seeing as they're the ones coming up with all the daft requirements that WordPad can't fulfill!

 

I'm just trying to wrap my head around batch conversion to PDF for all the files in a folder, but it keeps throwing an error and generally acting weirdly. I'm going from the final command on page 34 of the documentation, albeit tweaked to reference Adobe PDF as the printer i.e.

.\ExamWritePad.exe /FOLDER:"G:\DUMP\examFiles" /PRINT:"Adobe PDF" /COPIES:"1"

 

Say I have three files in the folder. For the first one, it'll open EWP and then pop up an error dialog saying

 

 

I click Close on that, then I get

 

 

After closing that one, it then prompts me to save the second and third PDFs--i.e. it's skipped the first file--but when I open the PDFs, it's just printed a blank page with the header & footer but none of the actual exam script. Even weirder, the header it prints is from the first (skipped) file for all the PDFs it does save, e.g. student2.pdf and student3.pdf both have student 1's data in the header and a single blank page. (student1.pdf doesn't exist at all.)

 

I've checked the Adobe PDF settings in Printer Preferences and it is set to A4 as default, and the .EXAMTEXT files in question are set to A4 (I assume that's default anyway?), so I'm not sure where the mismatch is coming from. Certainly I can open the file manually and print to Adobe PDF without changing any settings. I've tried opening EWP first to see if that wakes it up and gets it to check its settings, but that doesn't seem to change anything.

 

All the behaviour I've described above holds true if I change Adobe PDF to a physical printer, too--the error messages, and the erroneous content of the pages it does print, so it doesn't seem to be related to the device settings.

 

Where am I going wrong? This is version 4.5.3.0 installed locally on Win10 1903.

 

Thanks for the kinds words and taking the time to use EWP.

 

I will take a look at the batch printing issues you are having, it in the meantime could you try the Microsoft print to pdf as the printer if you have it available.

[sonofsanta]

Thanks for the kinds words and taking the time to use EWP.

 

I will take a look at the batch printing issues you are having, it in the meantime could you try the Microsoft print to pdf as the printer if you have it available.

 

 

I did try that first; it gives me the same two errors as described above, and then nothing else happens. I can print to Microsoft Print to PDF manually without issue (though it doesn't generate the filename automatically in the same way Adobe PDF does, but that's a printer thing, not an EWP thing) but from the command line it's doing even less than Adobe PDF; doesn't prompt me for a save location. Can't see any errors in Event Viewer either. Who knows what it's doing

[ass17]

I did try that first; it gives me the same two errors as described above, and then nothing else happens. I can print to Microsoft Print to PDF manually without issue (though it doesn't generate the filename automatically in the same way Adobe PDF does, but that's a printer thing, not an EWP thing) but from the command line it's doing even less than Adobe PDF; doesn't prompt me for a save location. Can't see any errors in Event Viewer either. Who knows what it's doing

 

Don’t worry that is my job to find out the root cause. I’m pretty sure it is a bug as I did have to change the paper size detection to a more generic approach as each printer never listed A4 as “A4”.

 

Leave it with me and I will be back later with an update.

[ass17]

Ok, I have tracked down the batch printing issue to the fact I forgot to pass the printer name to the paper size function.

 

I will patch up and release a new build tonight.

[ass17]

I did try that first; it gives me the same two errors as described above, and then nothing else happens. I can print to Microsoft Print to PDF manually without issue (though it doesn't generate the filename automatically in the same way Adobe PDF does, but that's a printer thing, not an EWP thing) but from the command line it's doing even less than Adobe PDF; doesn't prompt me for a save location. Can't see any errors in Event Viewer either. Who knows what it's doing

 

New build of EWP tonight for your good self! Will post it on this forum and website and all the usual places.

[ass17]

New version released

 

ADDED: AutoSaveInterval and AutoBackupInterval timers have now been given a minimum and maximum accepted value for each. This is to help stop instability of EWP when a ridiculous value is specified like 1 second!! The new minimum value is 30 seconds to a maximum of 600 seconds (10 mins). These are also reflected in the ConfigEditorGUI. If you bypass these values by editing the config manually, there is a check in place within EWP that will use the default of 60 seconds if you are under the minimum or over the maximum values.

 

ADDED: Paragraph Markers (Pilcrow) has now been added on the ‘insert’ ribbon bar. You can also disable the button as per other buttons via the ConfigEditorGUI.

 

FIXED: Command line printing failed because any printer name specified, was not passed to the print function. This affected all command line operations that required the print function.

 

 

 

Download from all the usual places, examwritepad.com, links in edugeek signature, updater in the software.

[sonofsanta]

New build of EWP tonight for your good self! Will post it on this forum and website and all the usual places.

 

 

Brilliant, works a charm! Thank you. (And it turns out Microsoft Print to PDF is better--just automatically saves with the filename, whereas Adobe PDF prompts each time. Easy as pie now )