Exam Lab PC Allowlist During Exams and Open Access After

During an exam, a lab PC needs exactly one thing: the exam portal. Before and after, the same PC is a teaching machine that needs the open internet. The allowlist has to switch between those two lives — honestly and reliably.

✍️ Technical Anshu🪟 Windows 10 / 11⏱️ 7 minute read

🎥 Watch the full video — Website Filter Pro setup and allow mode, step by step

Exam labs have a split personality. In teaching hours, students legitimately browse study material. In exam hours, the same machines must reach the exam portal and nothing else — no search, no messaging, no AI chat. The Website Filter Pro allow mode from the video handles the exam half well. The honest difficulty is the switching: most simple filters have no built-in timetable, so 'allowlist during exams, open after' is a procedure, not a magic setting. This guide gives the procedures that actually work, including the one most labs should choose — a separate exam profile.

Exam day checklist (illustrative)

Before students enter [ ] Exam profile signed in on every PC [ ] Allowlist ON — exam portal only [ ] Portal login tested on 2 sample PCs [ ] Search engine test — must be blocked After the exam [ ] Results / attendance submitted [ ] Teaching profile restored

An allowlist exam is won or lost in the fifteen minutes before students sit down. The checklist matters more than the tool.

Choose Your Switching Method Honestly

There are three real ways to switch a lab between exam and teaching modes. Pick by your lab's size — and do not pretend a manual step is automatic.

Manual switch: admin enables allow mode before the exam and disables it after. Fine for one small lab; risky when one tired admin manages sixty PCs
Separate exam profile (recommended): a dedicated standard user account on each PC where the allowlist always applies; teaching happens in the normal profile. Exam day becomes 'sign in to the exam account', nothing else
Scheduled task: technically possible with scripting on Windows, but fragile for a small team — if you cannot test it monthly, do not depend on it for an exam
Whichever you choose, the rule is the same: the portal alone is allowed in exam mode

Build the Exam Allowlist Around the Portal

Exam portals are exactly the kind of site that secretly needs helper domains — a login provider, a CDN, sometimes a separate test-delivery domain.

Add the exam portal domain in Website Filter Pro allow mode
Run a complete dummy exam login on one PC: sign in, open a question, submit an answer
If any step fails, find the helper domains with the Network tab method from our hidden domains guide and add them
Confirm that search engines, video sites and chat tools are all refused from the exam profile

Run the Fifteen-Minute Pre-Exam Test

Every exam lab horror story — forty students, no working portal — traces back to skipping this test on exam morning.

Test on the exam profile, on at least two PCs at opposite ends of the lab
Time the full dummy login: if the portal needs an OTP or second domain, you want to discover that now
Check one PC deliberately does something wrong — opens a search engine — and confirm it is blocked
Keep the admin password and the invigilator's contact in the room; an allowlist nobody on-site can adjust is a single point of failure

Restore Teaching Access Properly Afterwards

The end of the exam is where labs quietly break their own rules — machines left locked for weeks, or filters disabled 'temporarily' forever.

First confirm submissions are complete on the portal side before touching any PC
With the exam-profile pattern, restoration is just signing back into the teaching profile — nothing to undo
With a manual switch, disable allow mode and spot-check two PCs for normal browsing
Note any site the exam needed that was missing — add it to the exam list before the next exam, not during it

🔴 An honest word about exam security: an allowlist controls the PC's browsers. It does not stop a phone in a pocket, and it does not watch the room. Treat it as one layer alongside invigilation and phone rules — not as proof a lab is cheat-proof.

🎥 Watch the Full Video Guide

The complete Website Filter Pro walkthrough — download, allow mode and testing — is shown live in the video.

▶️ Watch Full Video

❓ Common Questions (FAQ)

Can the allowlist turn on and off automatically at exam times?

Simple website filters like the one in the video do not have a reliable built-in timetable. The dependable pattern is a separate exam user profile where the allowlist is always on: exam day is just a different sign-in, and there is nothing to forget in either direction.

The exam portal login works but the test page is blank. Why?

The portal's test delivery usually runs on a second domain or a CDN that is not yet allowed. Run a dummy login before exam day, watch the Network tab during the failing step, and add the specific helper domains it shows.

One student's PC lost internet completely during the exam. What should the invigilator do?

Move the student to a spare PC first — exams are not the time to troubleshoot. Afterwards, check the basics in order: cable or Wi-Fi, the portal itself being down, then the filter list. Pre-exam testing on sample PCs catches most of these cases before they matter.

This guide is based on the Technical Anshu video on allowing only selected websites • Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments — answers happen there 🙏