Issues that may arise during use
Some applications might need minor adjustments to operate smoothly with DaDesktop in Hong Kong
Problems arising from Fresh Start cloning and the fixes available
The vast majority of apps run without any trouble when set up on a Fresh Start machine with DaDesktop (DD). However, a handful of applications can behave unexpectedly after cloning, requiring a few extra steps to get them working properly.
- Oracle Database Server – you'll need to change the hostname from the one that gets duplicated to 127.0.0.1
- Hyper-V server – Hyper-V may run into trouble with duplicate MAC addresses when the External switch is on, after being cloned from the FreshStart machine.
- Google Chrome – Chrome might fail to launch properly on cloned machines because a profile is still tied to the Fresh Start machine, especially if the Fresh Start machine wasn't completely shut down before cloning.
- WSL - Windows System for Linux – Our testing reveals that DaDesktop machines with an WSL installation are not portable; that is, moving a DaDesktop machine with WSL to a different DD server will prevent it from booting successfully. The exact cause is unclear, but it's likely that Windows ties itself to the original hardware, and moving to another server breaks something. Since WSL is rarely used in training (participants usually work directly with Linux), this issue hasn't been fully explored yet.
- Issues where a trial software licence uses the MAC address to track the licence – Here, the licence was linked to a MAC address, so after cloning, it looked as though the licence had already been activated and was therefore spent.
-
Applications that need licences might have to be added once the FreshStart clone is completed.
Other Issues that may arise when using DaDesktop in Hong Kong
-
Very slow Virtualbox seen when using Hyper-V and VirtualBox (This can happen even without DaDesktop)
Problem: VirtualBox on Windows machines becomes extremely slow, making it nearly impossible to run a course. Fortunately, the fix is very straightforward:
Solution 1: Uninstall Hyper-V virtualisation from Windows:https://www.wintips.org/fix-virtualbox-running-very-slow-in-windows-10-11/
Solution 2: Ensure the workaround with Hyper‑V Server is applied as described above; otherwise, duplicate MAC addresses lead to slow machine usage, booting delays, and other strange behaviour.
- Unable to type certain characters e.g. Apostrophes / Quotation Marks, Inverted Commas, into a DaDesktop machine.
