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Thank you ExamSoft, for freezing in the middle of today's bar exam.

Thank you for locking me out and forcing me to handwrite the rest of my essays.

Thank you for the precious minutes I spent with a tech support rep who could do nothing.

Thank you for the memories.

Seriously though: Were many other bar takers affected by ExamSoft freezing/crashing problems during the July 2017 exam?

Yes. Three people sitting within two seats of me had their program freeze during the exam. For me personally, I had a terrible formatting issue on the MPT that took me 5-10 minutes to figure out, and on the MEE I accidentally wrote an answer in the wrong section and caught it at the last minute--hope I didn't make any mistakes I didn't catch...

Yeah, Softest froze on me, too. I had to completely handwrite the performance test (hopefully the grader will be able to decipher my handwriting as I have not written anything that long in ages). The 3 other persons next to me had Softest freeze, but fortunately for them only as they were saving and exiting from the program.

I was also concerned that the improper exit from the program jeopardized my essays 4 and 5, but I called Examsoft and they assured me the file was intact.

ETA: When I sat for the NY bar 3 years ago there was a class settlement due to applicants' not being able to upload the answer files after the written day and we got a small sum. Maybe if enough people were affected today we could get some compensation as well?

Feel bad for those who had issues.

I am actually running Preview Editions of Windows 10 (part of the "insider program" - not as neat as it sounds as anyone can join) I had my reservations about using the program but ultimately only had "quirks" to deal with rather than actual issues.

I happened to have just a few spare minutes to go back over essays (frankly not sure why I went back to see them as my time was ticking down) but I am glad I did, for some reason I went back to two...TWO different essays that somehow magically were "over the character limit" and ExamSoft cut off character/words that were there when I left the essay (no character issues when I left the specific essay but issues when I came back...how the hell is that possible? Is the character counting not real time? I mean...fuck me. I would have been pissed as hell if I found out later that words off of my conclusion were cut off)

I was able to fix them, but still - WTF?

Next, i would like to bitch about character limits, I suppose I understand why they exist, but when I viewed my "statistics" I had been character limited between 750 and 800 words. To me, that simply doesnt feel like enough space, especially for certain MEE questions that had four (4) sub parts. I am stating rules, applying facts to rules and attempting to argue both sides or come to a conclusion but I am being cut off. It happened on a couple of essays (a few others I wasnt super close) but when I did reach the limit I ended up spending time re-formatting, cutting and changing the ways I wanted to organize my answer which really pisses me off. I spend over $100 to use their program, to make graders jobs easier (that is assuming someone actually reads it...lots of rumors essays are being graded by computer with specific search terms being used which I think needs to be investigated).

Sorry for the mini rant, my issues dont compare to others - but I am curious why - I am on a preview edition and had absolutely no issues, yet people on more stable editions of an operating system cant run a simple program like ExamSoft? I wonder why that is - are folks using budget PCs? Is it other program issues? Perhaps spyware or internet security programs? Very odd.

Happened to me too. Examsoft locked up right in the middle of the MPT.

Luckily I just had to restart.

A guy at my school had the same problem.

crumb cake wrote:Happened to me too. Examsoft locked up right in the middle of the MPT.

Luckily I just had to restart.

Same exact story for me.

Happened to the guy sitting in front of me in Ontario. I was feeling for him

mimim8 wrote:Happened to the guy sitting in front of me in Ontario. I was feeling for him

Hope I didn't make too much of a scene if I was the guy in front of you. Hahaha

Tablemate in Florida got screwed. They also verified the version and if you were on creator's edition you had to use the old pen and paper.

ExamSoft is Easy. Secure. Reliable. so I'm not sure what y'all are complaining about.

Not an Examsoft issue, but I was shocked by how quick the character limit was used up. I had issues on almost every essay. I think it should be a word limit rather than a character limit. I had to sacrafice some "pretty" formatting/whitespace/etc to make room for sentences. Maybe that means I was writing too much, but for the 3 and 4 part questions, I don't really think so.

Got'eem wrote:

mimim8 wrote:Happened to the guy sitting in front of me in Ontario. I was feeling for him

Hope I didn't make too much of a scene if I was the guy in front of you. Hahaha

!!

Well I don't know if it was you but no scene whatsoever, or at least I didn't notice. I am sure I would have handled it way worse had it happened to me! So if it was you- good job at tackling a difficult situation.

RaceJudicata wrote:Not an Examsoft issue, but I was shocked by how quick the character limit was used up. I had issues on almost every essay. I think it should be a word limit rather than a character limit. I had to sacrafice some "pretty" formatting/whitespace/etc to make room for sentences. Maybe that means I was writing too much, but for the 3 and 4 part questions, I don't really think so.

Please don't tell me there's a word limit on the MEE that I didn't know about.

yes. i had my computer keep trying to put itself to sleep even though sleep was disabled and had to constantly move the cursor so i could see what i had typed while i was reading. then suddenly the actual mouse cursor became invisible so i couldn't tell what i was clicking and couldn't click to go to the next answer, etc. when it came time to exit and save my exam i just had to line up where i thought my cursor would be and click every few pixels down until i hit the button. it was insane. then for the next part they say begin and the girl next to me immediately has her examsoft crash completely while it was still blocking her computer and had to call tech support over and basically missed almost two essays

crumb cake wrote:

RaceJudicata wrote:Not an Examsoft issue, but I was shocked by how quick the character limit was used up. I had issues on almost every essay. I think it should be a word limit rather than a character limit. I had to sacrafice some "pretty" formatting/whitespace/etc to make room for sentences. Maybe that means I was writing too much, but for the 3 and 4 part questions, I don't really think so.

Please don't tell me there's a word limit on the MEE that I didn't know about.

I'm really hoping that the jurisdictions that have a word/character limit make it clear beforehand. I didn't think mine had limits (or at least not limits that could easily be reached) but this thread made me a little paranoid!

ExamSoft fought with my virus scanning software for a few minutes when I started it up. Luckily, I was able to kill off the virus scanner tasks and get ExamSoft stabilized before the exam started. I would certainly advise anyone taking the next sitting to consider uninstalling the virus scanner the day before. Per the instructions, I had turned off the software, but hadn't uninstalled it. Enough of the background tasks were still active (updater, maybe?) to cause conflicts.

I didn't have the same problems with the mock exam, and I wasn't going to leave virus scanning off for most of July in any case.

Along with the whole Creators Update mess, I don't feel ExamSoft is doing their job ensuring reasonable compatibility. Having a captive revenue stream begets laziness.

Slytherpuff wrote:

crumb cake wrote:

RaceJudicata wrote:Not an Examsoft issue, but I was shocked by how quick the character limit was used up. I had issues on almost every essay. I think it should be a word limit rather than a character limit. I had to sacrafice some "pretty" formatting/whitespace/etc to make room for sentences. Maybe that means I was writing too much, but for the 3 and 4 part questions, I don't really think so.

Please don't tell me there's a word limit on the MEE that I didn't know about.

I'm really hoping that the jurisdictions that have a word/character limit make it clear beforehand. I didn't think mine had limits (or at least not limits that could easily be reached) but this thread made me a little paranoid!

If there's a limit it will tell you when you're writing and if you've exceeded it.

runinthefront wrote:

crumb cake wrote:Happened to me too. Examsoft locked up right in the middle of the MPT.

Luckily I just had to restart.

Same exact story for me.

That sucks. How does that work, though? Did your work save/did you get extra time?

CardozoLaw09 wrote:

runinthefront wrote:

crumb cake wrote:Happened to me too. Examsoft locked up right in the middle of the MPT.

Luckily I just had to restart.

Same exact story for me.

That sucks. How does that work, though? Did your work save/did you get extra time?

Your work saves every minute. Under no circumstances do you get extra time.

I lost like five minutes of my time.

Worst $105 I've ever spent.

cal.trask wrote:

Slytherpuff wrote:

crumb cake wrote:

RaceJudicata wrote:Not an Examsoft issue, but I was shocked by how quick the character limit was used up. I had issues on almost every essay. I think it should be a word limit rather than a character limit. I had to sacrafice some "pretty" formatting/whitespace/etc to make room for sentences. Maybe that means I was writing too much, but for the 3 and 4 part questions, I don't really think so.

Please don't tell me there's a word limit on the MEE that I didn't know about.

I'm really hoping that the jurisdictions that have a word/character limit make it clear beforehand. I didn't think mine had limits (or at least not limits that could easily be reached) but this thread made me a little paranoid!

If there's a limit it will tell you when you're writing and if you've exceeded it.

That blows with a limit, NY didn't have one last year thankfully....tax brief from hell nasty stuff.

runinthefront wrote:

CardozoLaw09 wrote:

runinthefront wrote:

crumb cake wrote:Happened to me too. Examsoft locked up right in the middle of the MPT.

Luckily I just had to restart.

Same exact story for me.

That sucks. How does that work, though? Did your work save/did you get extra time?

Your work saves every minute. Under no circumstances do you get extra time.

I lost like five minutes of my time.

I get why there's no extra time from even just a purely logistical standpoint, but I think the combined effect of no extra time plus laptop at your own risk plus pay $105 for the #privilege of using a laptop plus LOLwhatistechsupport is a rather cruel combination. They should address at least some of the blatant issues that seem to have plagued a good number of test takers this year (and it seems like in past years, too), whether it be in the form of software usability and stability updates/improvements or providing tech support that actually understands the software in and out.

Laptop crashed in the middle of the essays. Lost 5 mins also. Luckily I was a bit ahead. I just made it on the MPTs, so I wouldn't have finished then. It's pathetic how common this was.

CardozoLaw09 wrote:

runinthefront wrote:

crumb cake wrote:Happened to me too. Examsoft locked up right in the middle of the MPT.

Luckily I just had to restart.

Same exact story for me.

That sucks. How does that work, though? Did your work save/did you get extra time?

Yeah, it saves periodically. I didn't really check to see what was saved/lost when I booted up, just started the next question. At a glance it looked like everything was fine though.