Potential Problems When Using DaDesktop

A handful of applications may require slight adjustments to work fully with DaDesktop

Cloning Issues from Fresh Start and Available Solutions

Most programs run perfectly when set up on the Fresh Start machine using DaDesktop (DD). However, a couple of applications don't behave as expected after cloning due to the process itself, and they need a few extra steps to function normally.

• Oracle Database Server - The hostname that would be duplicated must be changed to 127.0.0.1
• Hyper-V server - When cloned from the Fresh Start machine and the External switch is enabled, Hyper-V has trouble with duplicate MAC addresses
• Google Chrome - Chrome may not start correctly on cloned machines because of a profile linked to the Fresh Start machine, particularly if the original machine wasn't fully shut down during cloning
• WSL - Windows System for Linux - Testing has shown that DaDesktop machines with a WSL installation lack portability; moving such a machine to another DD server prevents it from booting successfully. The root cause is unknown, but it's likely that Windows makes hardware assumptions that cause problems upon relocation. Since WSL is rarely employed in training—Linux is usually run directly—this issue hasn't been thoroughly investigated yet
• Problems with trial software licences tied to a MAC address - In this scenario, the licence was locked to a MAC address, so after cloning, the licence appeared to be already activated and used up.
• Licensed applications may need to be installed after the Fresh Start clone is complete.
   

Additional Problems That Can Arise When Using DaDesktop

• Extremely sluggish VirtualBox when Hyper-V and VirtualBox coexist (This occurs not only with DaDesktop)

  Problem: VirtualBox becomes so slow on Windows that delivering a course is nearly impossible, but the fix is remarkably simple:-
  Solution 1: Uninstall 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 described above; otherwise, duplicate MAC addresses lead to sluggish performance, boot issues, and other peculiar behaviour.

• Certain characters like apostrophes, quotation marks, and inverted commas, cannot be typed into DaDesktop machines.