As SEB is quite a complicated software which supports a wide range of different use cases, it is imperative to familiarize with its most important components and functionality. Hence our extensive user documentation, to be found under https://safeexambrowser.org/windows/win_usermanual_en.html.

From your issue report I would assume that you are experiencing the issues in a BYOD scenario? If so, we strongly recommend to not use the SEB Service on student devices and hence activating the configuration option "Ignore SEB Service" (see https://safeexambrowser.org/windows/win_usermanual_en.html#SecurityPane > SEB Service).

The issues itself should be reversible by usage of the Reset Utility, which is part of every SEB installation. For more information regarding the utility, please refer to https://safeexambrowser.org/windows/win_usermanual_en.html#RegistryPane.

Hi Frederik! Fun seeing you here too, its me... Pieterjan.

Anyways, the power options going all strange is due to SEB and a hard reboot before SEB can close normally. The reset tool is the only way to fix that. Its being discussed in another issue as well.

Hi Pieterjan!

I already saw your messages. But this one is pretty strange and happening in a lot of schools.
@dbuechel thanks for your answer. In our configuration file the Ignore SEB Service is checked...

I've tried all the options with reset utility, power off options, taskmanager, PowerShell (get-service safeexambrowser, it was stopped, to see if I needed to use stop-service). Nothing worked... Only PowerShell stop-computer or cmd-instruction shutdown with a parameter like /p

So I really think this is a huge problem, but maybe I'm wrong.
The only remark I can give, is that it crashes when Sebdummy.exe is trying to manipulate utilman.exe

Thanks to investigate this answer again.

It's interesting that we hardly got any reports about problems with the power option Registry settings in the last couple of years or so and suddenly it's popping up again. Maybe some anti-malware software again started to block the SEB Windows Service from setting or likely resetting those Registry settings. Windows is just a mess with all the malware and aggressive anti-malware junk, sorry to say it bluntly.

If Ignore SEB Service is set, SEB definitely shouldn't change those Registry settings. But you need to make sure that you don't use any SEB configuration which has that option disabled. So if Ignore SEB Service is set in the client settings, but by mistake set in an exam config, the according Registry settings will still be set/reset by SEB, which might go wrong if some third-party tool (or even some Windows security settings) prevent that.

Or there is some new bug in SEB 3.6 causing that. But we can't look into that before the second week of January, so the only workaround would be to use SEB 3.5 in the meantime. On GitHub, recent older SEB versions are usually available (see Releases).

Btw. there is a possible exploit involving utilman.exe, which SEB currently can only prevent when Ignore SEB Service is disabled (when SEB Service is used). In case you suspect students might be trying such exploits, exam proctors should make sure students don't go into the security screen with Ctrl+Alt+Del.

Hi

Thanks for your answer. In fact the first time I saw this problem was in SEB 3.5 a few days ago with Windows 11 23H2 with newest updates. So I tried to handle the problem, but nothing seems to work. So I thought installing SEB 3.6 would fix the problem, but it isn't. Thats why I think it has to do with Windows 11 23H2.

In client- and exam-configuration "Ignore SEB Service" is checked.

The strange thing is this error does not happen on all our devices, but just on some (and sometimes, but not a lot, SEB just works on these devices). Because other schools also reporting this same error, I think it was good to report this error.

Frederik works for another school in my district and strangely enough, I didn't encounter this issue in my school. We even use almost the same type of laptops... This is a very strange issue indeed. Most of the times, I was able to solve the issue Frederik describes by upgrading SEB from 3.5.0 to 3.6.0 ... Maybe a recent Windows update is doing some crazy stuff? I'll keep an extra eye out, maybe there were cases I missed.

@frederik-it If the SEB Service is ignored, then it's not SEB manipulating these options. Those operations are done by the service component exclusively. Is there anything we'd need to investigate further here or could you resolve the issue in the meantime?

This issue is stale because it has been open for 28 days with no activity. It will soon be closed automatically if there are no updates.

This issue was closed because it has been inactive for 14 days since being marked as stale.