Technical requirements for PCs - Placement 2013

Appendix A: Technical requirements for PCs

Minimum Recommended

Processor Pentium® II 450 MHz Pentium III 800 MHz

RAM 256 MB 512 MB

Free hard drive space 2 GB 4 GB

Screen resolution 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024

Operating system Windows® 2000 Pro Windows XP Pro or later

Internet connection 512 kbps 1 Mbps

Internet Explorer v 6 v 7

Adobe Acrobat® v 6 v 6 or later

Adobe Flash Player® v 9.0 v 10.0 or later

Java Runtime

Environment

v 5 v 6

Other Sound card and headphones Sound card and headphones

Other factors affecting performance

The Cambridge Placement Test is a real-time online test. As a result, its performance

depends on factors such as internet connection speed, available bandwidth, the number of

concurrent internet users on a network, other internet services which are running, and local ISP capacity.

Applications you can download

You can download the latest version of Adobe Flash Player from:

• http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer

You can download the latest version of Java Runtime Environment from:

• http://www.java.com

Appendix B: Configuring Internet Explorer 7 on Candidate PCs

If Internet Explorer 7 is not configured correctly for Cambridge Placement Test, you may

encounter problems such as the following:

• The test does not start when Candidates enter their tokens.

• Internet Explorer displays a security message referring to a local clipboard.

• Internet Explorer displays pop-up blocker messages and scripting warnings.

To avoid such problems, follow the steps below. If you use Internet Explorer 6 and have

problems, similar steps may help.

Make Cambridge Placement Test a trusted site

1. In Internet Explorer 7, open the Tools menu and choose Internet Options.

2. On the Security tab, click the “Trusted sites” icon and then the Sites button.

3. In the “Add this Web site to the zone” field, type one of the following addresses:

• on PCs that will use the Administration website:

www.admincpt.cambridgetest.org

• on PCs that will use the Candidate website:

www.cpt.cambridgetest.org

4. Click the Add button.

5. Click the Close button.

6. If the Default Level button is enabled, click it.

7. With “Trusted sites” still selected, move the slider in the lower part of the Internet

Options box to the Medium-Low position. (The setting applies only to the websites in

your Trusted Sites security zone.)

8. Click the OK button.

Adjust the Pop-Up Blocker setting

1. In Internet Explorer 7, open the Tools menu and choose Internet Options.

2. On the Privacy tab, in the Pop-Up Blocker section, click Settings.

18 User Guide for Direct Customers and Test Administrators (June 2009)

3. In the “Address of website to allow” field, type one of the following addresses:

• on PCs that will use the Administration website:

www.admincpt.cambridgetest.org

• on PCs that will use the Candidate website:

www.cpt.cambridgetest.org

4. Click the Close button.

5. Click the OK button.

Allow access to the local clipboard

On Candidate PCs, the Cambridge Placement Test needs to be able to clear the local

clipboard to help prevent Candidates copying and printing questions. (The following

procedure applies only to sites in the Trusted Sites zone.)

1. On Candidate PCs, in Internet Explorer 7, open the Tools menu and choose Internet

Options.

2. On the Security tab, select Trusted Sites and click the Custom Level button.

3. Scroll down to the Scripting section (near the bottom).

4. Under “Allow Programmatic clipboard access”, select Enable. (In Internet Explorer 6,

this option is called “Allow paste operations via script”.)

5. Click the OK button.

6. Click the OK button again.