Emulator Connects but only shows a blank screen since February 12th

[Chuck]

I have not been able to test any projects on the emulator since February 11th. 

The emulator connects as normal but when I unlock the screen it just shows a blank white screen. I have tried different computers, rebooting, different account, and different browsers. Nothing has changed in our set up at the school. Some of the students are able to connect to their Android phones and test on their phones, but not all students have an Android phone to test on.

I've attached a screen shot.

[SteveJG]

Most probably those students that are not successful have not updated Companion, either on the Android or the emulator.  The students should be using Companion version 2.24.  To update on the Android, in most cases this is automatic, however some might have to do this by going to Google Play.   When Companion comes up on their devices, check to see if they have 2.24, if not they need to upgrade.

Regarding those students using the emulator, they too probably do not have the Companion 2.24.   For them to upgrade, they can   Projects > Hard Reset ; then following the pop up instructions being careful to perform every step.  When they are done, close the browser and try running their project again.

Be aware, since the evening of 11 February, the loading of both the emulator and the device graphic screen happens a little differently than prior to the nr140 AI2 update.  The 'ghost' buttons or images students are used to are no longer there; instead, the device or emulator will show a WHITE screen.  Give it time to render.   In most cases, students should now see their projects loaded to their emulator.

In some instances, if the student's project has coding errors, his/her aia is larger than 5 Mb or they have more than ten screens in their projects, they still will not be able to load until they correct the deficiencies in their projects.

Try some things.   Let us know what happens.    If there are still issues, if you explain what you did so far, we can stil help.

Regards,

Steve

[Chuck]

Thank you for your reply.

The students using their Androids are working because they just installed it yesterday. 

There is no prompt to update the emulator anywhere, we believe it might flash on the emulator for a fraction of a second - it appears as though there is some box, but we can't even read what is says. I have the school administrator working on it, so we know there is nothing being blocked by restricted privileges. When we try the hard reset it closes the emulator, but we don't get any pop-up instructions to update anything. We tried to reset connection, closing the browser, restarting, but still nothing to update.

[Chuck]

We tried uninstalling and running the update. It works for the administrator, but not for anyone else. Any thoughts?

[SteveJG]

You must be an Admin to install....from the instructions: 

Installing the App Inventor Setup software package

You must perform the installation from an account that has administrator privileges. Installing via a non-administrator account is currently not supported.

You need to temporarily allow Admin privlidges on the pc's  and install taht way  or  you might be able to use the silent install method  to install to all the pcs (get help from your IT person):

The new Installer now works in silent mode here is the flags to use. At the command prompt type the following.

/S - for silent mode (default will be all users) and will need admin permissions.

/user=all or /user=current (again you will need admin permissions for all users)

/update - update installation.

/skiplicense - skip license

>MIT_App_Inventor_Tools_2.3.0_win_setup [/S] [/user=all or /user=current] 

or 

>sudo MIT_App_Inventor_Tools_2.3.0_win_setup [/S] [/user=all or /user=current] 

if you need admin permissions.

Regards,

Steve