Possible complications while using DaDesktop

While most software runs smoothly, a handful of apps might need a tiny tweak to integrate fully with DaDesktop

Fresh Start cloning glitches and their solutions

The vast majority of applications behave perfectly when set up on a Fresh Start machine within DaDesktop (DD). However, a couple of apps don’t function as anticipated right after cloning, and they require a few additional steps to get back to normal.

• Oracle Database Server - You'll need to update the hostname from the duplicated one to 127.0.0.1
• Hyper-V server - Hyper-V encounters duplicate MAC address issues when the External switch is enabled on clones from the Fresh Start machine
• Google Chrome - Chrome might fail to launch properly on cloned machines if the Fresh Start machine wasn’t fully shut down during cloning, because of a profile linked to that original machine.
• WSL - Windows System for Linux - In testing, we discovered that DaDesktop machines with a WSL installation aren’t portable; if you move such a machine to another DD server, it won’t boot. The cause is still a mystery, but we suspect Windows ties itself to the specific hardware it was installed on, and moving to different hardware triggers a failure. Since WSL is seldom used in training (most users just work directly with Linux), we haven’t dug deeply into this yet.
• Issues where a trial software licence uses the MAC address to track the licence - Here, the trial licence is bound to a MAC address, so after cloning, it seems like the licence has already been used and can’t be activated again.
• Any software that needs a licence might have to be installed after cloning the Fresh Start machine.
   

Additional hiccups you could run into while using DaDesktop

• Very slow Virtualbox seen when using Hyper-V and VirtualBox (This isn’t exclusive to DaDesktop)

  Problem: VirtualBox runs painfully slowly on Windows machines, practically making it impossible to run a course. But the fix is surprisingly easy:
  Solution 1: Remove Hyper-V virtualisation from Windows:

  https://www.wintips.org/fix-virtualbox-running-very-slow-in-windows-10-11/

  Solution 2: Apply the Hyper-V Server workaround mentioned earlier; otherwise, duplicate MAC addresses can cause sluggish performance, slow booting, and other odd behaviors.

• Unable to type certain characters ie Apostrophes / Quotation Marks, Inverted Commas, while trying to enter them into a DaDesktop machine.