Checking Your Equipment Properly

Most exam-day technical failures come from a short list, and every item on it is checkable in advance.

For planning a technical practice run alongside other commitments, the complete guide provides a useful time-recording reference. Keep the log under your control and record only what helps you prepare.

The computer

Check the stated requirements against what you have: operating system version, browser, memory.

A useful outside source on account and device security is CISA Secure Our World. Compare it with your institution’s written procedure before making decisions.

Run updates days before, not the night before. An update that starts twenty minutes before your exam is the classic disaster, and operating systems schedule them at inconvenient times.

Then turn automatic updates off for the exam period if you can, or at least schedule them outside it.

Restart before the exam. A machine that has been awake for three weeks behaves differently from one that has just started.

The camera

Check it works in the actual lighting you will have.

Light in front of you, not behind. A window behind you turns you into a silhouette and face detection fails, which produces repeated check-in attempts under time pressure.

Position it so your face and the area around you are visible without you having to sit unnaturally. You will be there for hours.

And clean the lens, which sounds trivial and resolves a surprising number of detection problems.

The microphone

Check it is not muted at the operating system level, which the exam software cannot override.

Test that it picks you up. A dead microphone can itself be flagged as a problem.

And know where the room's noise comes from — a fan, a fridge, traffic — because constant noise is different from a voice and reviewers can tell.

Power

Plugged in, not on battery.

If you have had power cuts, know what happens: does the exam resume, and who do you contact.

Peripherals

Disconnect second monitors before the exam. Many systems flag them and some refuse to start.

Disconnect anything you do not need. External drives, a second keyboard, a tablet in mirroring mode.

If you rely on an external monitor for accessibility reasons, that is an adjustment to arrange in advance, not a thing to explain during check-in.

Assistive technology

Test it with the proctoring software specifically.

reading software, magnification, speech input and switch access all interact with lockdown software, sometimes badly.

If something does not work, that is a reasonable adjustment request and the institution should accommodate it. It is also much easier to raise a week early than on the day.

Write down what you tested

Date, what you checked, what the result was.

If something fails during the exam despite this, that record is useful — and it also means you are not trying to remember whether you checked the microphone.

What to check

Does your machine meet the stated requirements?

Is the light in front of you?

Are updates disabled for the exam period?

And have you tested your assistive technology with the actual software?

The point

Light in front of you, not behind.

A window at your back turns you into a silhouette and face detection fails at the worst moment.

Additionally

Test your assistive technology with the proctoring software specifically.

reading software, magnification and speech input all interact with lockdown tools, sometimes badly.

Finally

Test your assistive technology with the proctoring software specifically.

reading software, magnification and speech input all interact with lockdown tools, sometimes badly.

In summary

Test your assistive technology with the proctoring software specifically.

reading software, magnification and speech input all interact with lockdown tools, sometimes badly.

A note on this

Disconnect second monitors and anything you do not need.

Many systems flag them and some refuse to start.

Bottom line

Disconnect second monitors and anything you do not need.

Many systems flag them and some refuse to start.

Worth repeating

Almost everything in this collection comes down to three habits: prepare the technical side a week early, know what the process actually is before you need it, and write down the time whenever something unusual happens. None of them takes long, and between them they prevent or resolve the great majority of what goes wrong with monitored exams.