Firefox 1.0.2 incompatible with Prentice Hall's TestGen

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anocelot
Posts: 2
Joined: April 14th, 2005, 3:25 pm

Firefox 1.0.2 incompatible with Prentice Hall's TestGen

Post by anocelot »

MAC OS 10.3, Firefox 1.0.2

OK. After a MAJOR headache on one of my instructor's computers, I've finally tracked this one down. I really hope someone can get new(er) versions of the firefox installer to ignore these files...

If you have installed "Pearson Prentice Hall's TestGen" then you may not be able to install firefox. I don't know if firefox will stop working after TG is installed, but it wouldn't surprise me. Even if you uninstall (delete) the TG software, you may still have to go in and manually do some clean up. This is a manual fix at this point, and you better follow the directions EXPLICITLY. Skipping steps MAY NOT WORK!!!

1. Delete the firefox executable. (I'm not kidding. Something is modified in the firefox.app/ folder and it's just easier to nuke the whole thing.
2. Delete your user preferences folder. Go to ~/Library/Application\ Preferences and delete the folder "Firefox."
3. Open /Library/Internet\ Plugins and delete anything that has the characters "TGEQ" in it.
4. Copy a clean version of firefox back to your applications folder.

If you need more information, please post and I can elaborate on any steps here. If you happen to have a copy of this program (I think he said it shipped on some CD he got with a textbook), it's evidently not worth running. As always, YMMV.

Kevin Metcalf
De Anza College, Cupertino CA
montecore
Posts: 50
Joined: April 5th, 2005, 8:52 am

Post by montecore »

Kevin.....this is very interesting....why? I have evaluated the last two releases of this software as quality control for an instructors point of view. I taught a college course in which I used the TG package to generate my exams. Both of these were installed on my Win2000Pro system running FF 1.0.2 and I have not had any problems using the latest TG6 version of the software.

Sorry, but I have no experience with MAC OS 10.3 since I am a strict Windows user. I wonder if this is a MAC OS issue...I would contact Pearson TestGen section and inquire about this issue.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

this was my problem! Wish I had searched for testgen on this forum when I was trying to figure out why firefox stopped working. I finally found the fonts from testgen in my plugins folder and deleted them and then firefox worked. v. weird.
anocelot
Posts: 2
Joined: April 14th, 2005, 3:25 pm

Post by anocelot »

Oops. Been a while since I came back here, I guess. Montecore: No, it's NOT a Macintosh issue. In my experience troubleshooting software, it's not usually a good idea to try and trouble shoot systems which I know nothing about. With all due respect, I'm a systems analyst/adminstrator and I specialize in unix (including Mac OS X), so I probably know what I'm talking about here. Guest (the post after you) hit it on the head. TG puts crap in the plugins folder that Firefox can't identify. This is either:

1. A Firefox issue. If this is the case, FF needs to be able to ignore stuff better.
2. A TG issue. Does this data need to be in that folder?

I'll be the first to admit I have limited experience with OS X system file placement methodologies, but given the software-specific nature of this problem (I've never had FF do this with any other software package) I would suspect that number two is the issue.

Regards,
Kevin
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