ISSUE:
VERDE customer is using Windows OS as Guest VDI but is not using Active Directory, which makes Windows configuration difficult when paired with VERDE's dynamic desktop model.
Why is this difficult?...
- End user configuration changes made to gold image are not applied dynamic desktops
- Mapping of network drives cannot be configured in the gold image.
- If one were to attempt a workaround by modifying each of the dynamic desktops by using a startup script defined in the gold image to do the drive mapping, the resulting drive will not work as the manually mounted one. The mapping appears to succeed and users can view the mapped drives but can not save to it from desktop applications which result in an odd permission's issue. It's not clear where the permission restriction comes from.
Bottom line: the networked Windows without AD has unexpected authentication issues.
SOLUTION:
Implement auto logon as Administrator. Note that this required the Autologon.exe found here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963905.aspx
After this change, the drive mapping is applied for all users after setting it once for the Administrator.