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In case anyone here is faced with using the AQA DTT for their MFL speaking exams and it won't work, here is my quick guide based on a support call and some fettling: Extract the zip into a suitable folder under c:\program files\ Give users modify access on the folder and its contents. The part of the DTT which detects if you have an Internet connection is not capable of understanding proxies, so you can't tell it where your proxy server is or feed it credentials - it just tries to access the sites directly via HTTPS. If your proxy server set up is similar to ours that may mean adding an additional rule to allow computers on your LAN to access: aqa.maps-ict.com 78.136.38.131 aqademo.maps-ict.com 131.227.202.55 ... via HTTPS (port 443). I then tried logging on to the live version with the exams officer's AQA credentials. First time I got the message: On subsequent attempts I get the message: Clicking OK doesn't drop you out of the software, but instead leaves you at a screen saying: As you may have guessed it never makes any progress and sits there forever if you leave it. It turns out that this part of the DTT does understand proxy servers, so you need to tell it an account to use and where you proxy server is. The dialogue which allows you to make those config changes is only available once you have logged in to the desktop tool and downloaded your school's data... which you can't do until you have entered the proxy settings. Chicken and egg. Luckily (I think?) AQA aren't too bothered about security, so they store those proxy settings in plain text in side an XML file: c:\pathtoAQAsoftware\config.xml Initially it will look like this: https://aqa.maps-ict.com/services/ Data false It needs to look more like this: https://aqademo.maps-ict.com/services/ Data true 0 AQAACCOUNT AQAACCOUNTPASSWORD PROXYPORT PROXYNAME Authentication type 0 worked for us, but you it might not work for you so maybe a little trial and error is in order. Because passwords are stored in plaintext it might be worth creating an account purely for the AQA software with a password you don't use regularly and then disabling the account when it's not in use. If you deviate from the instructions above, it will likely cause the "unspecified error". In that case, simply move/delete the contents of: c:\pathtoAQAsoftware\Data\ and try again. If that doesn't work, just move/delete the entire software folder and make one from scratch from the zip.

Had an issue this morning as none of our reader pupils could listen to the PDF the AQA gave us for the exam.. In their wisdom they decided to not only password protect the PDF, (ok enough) but they restricted copying and printing. This lead to the immediate issue that the screen reader software couldn't access the PDF, so 6 pupils without a screen reader. (Natural reader 16) Nice. (The built in edge screen reader won't work as internet access is disabled for obvious reasons)

Hello everyone, We have installed AQA E-Science onto our server using the server install. We are trying to get the client install to work but it keeps failing when we launch the e-science client with the following error -> "Unable to load JVM library" Has anyone else experienced this problem, if so how did you go about solving it? Thanks and regards, J.Worth

Hi folks, new here! Just wondering if anyone else has had trouble getting the new AQA Centre Services portal website https:\\onlineservices.aqa.org.uk to work within their school domain? For information we use Smoothwall UTM 1000 for filtering and firewall. We have whitelisted all the URL's AQA suggested, bypassed the proxy etc and all we get is a time out 503 error after about 30 seconds. Any advice or things to check would be appreciated

Anybody else using Smoothwall and having aqa.org.uk blocked due to HTML.IFrame-39?

Received this from AQA - I think its legit as far as I can tell. I've not included the FAQ which really wasn't that useful... Meldrew

Is anyone having problems getting onto AQAs website? Since the re-design it completely crashes IE8 and IE9 but works fine with Chrome. As we are a CC4 school we currently have IE8 everywhere, we tried to upgrade to IE9 but that crashed out every 5 minutes so we decided to hold off. Obviously this is causing us a real headache as it's exam season and we're getting increasing numbers of staff complain! Lee

What do people think of this development... That new 'Microsoft GCSE': We reveal what's in it ? The Register Pupils get 60% credit for Programming using Microsoft Tools and 40% for "fact digesting". Seems like a step in the right direction but hopefully won't eclipse efforts to embed devices such as the Raspberry Pi.