Disabling the Windows Logon Screen Saver

Why

• Screen savers are not necessary for virtual machines
• Running screen savers wastes CPU resources
• There is no interface option to disable the screen saver on the log on screen in Windows

To disable Windows Logon Screen Saver:

1. Click Start > Run, type regedit, click OK.
2. Locate the following registry key:

HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

3. Double-click the ScreenSaveActive string value item in the Details pane.
4. In the Value data box, replace the number 1 with the number 0, and then click OK.

Terminal Services Virtual Channels (used by MMR)

Virtual channels are software extensions that can be used to add functional enhancements to a Terminal Services application. Examples of functional enhancements might include: support for special types of hardware, audio, or other additions to the core functionality provided by the Terminal Services Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). The RDP protocol provides multiplexed management of multiple virtual channels.

A virtual channel application has two parts, a client-side component and a server-side component. The server-side component is an executable program running on the terminal server. The client-side component is a DLL that must be loaded into memory on the client computer when the Terminal Services client program runs.

Virtual channels can add functional enhancements to a Terminal Services client, independent of the RDP protocol. With virtual channel support, new features can be added without having to update the client or server software, or the RDP protocol.

Four major classes of users of virtual channels have been identified:

• General kernel-mode drivers, such as serial or printer drivers.
• File system redirection (this is just a special case of a general kernel-mode driver).
• User mode applications, for example remote cut-and-paste.
• Audio devices.

For more information, see Using Terminal Services Virtual Channels.

If you have enabled a virtual channels application in your Terminal Services deployment, you can make the application available to client computers that access the terminal server by means of the Remote Desktop Microsoft ActiveX control. For more information, see Scriptable Virtual Channels and Using the Remote Desktop ActiveX Control with Virtual Channels.

General Installation Guidelines VDI

The following guidelines apply to all installations types (new installations and upgrades).

• Synchronize time — Make sure that you have synchronized time across VDM Connection Server and desktop virtual machines. By default, virtual machines pick up the time from the ESX host at boot up and you may have to synchronize time on the ESX hosts through the ntpd service.
• Validate your Internet Explorer settings — VDM Client uses Microsoft Internet Explorer� internet settings, including proxy settings, when connecting to VDM Connection Server. Ensure that your Internet Explorer settings are accurate and that you can access the VDM Connection Server URL through Internet Explorer.
• Before creating an automatically provisioned desktop pool, do the following:
  • Validate the VirtualCenter guest customization specification if you intend to use one — Make sure that the guest customization specification in VirtualCenter is accurate. You should use VirtualCenter to deploy and customize a VM from your template using that customization specification and fully test the resulting VM (in other words, DHCP, authentication) before using that customization specification in VDM Administrator.
  • Validate network ports on ESX — Make sure you have a sufficient number of ports on the virtual switch which is used for the guest VMs. The default value for ESX server is 24; it may not be sufficient when creating a large pool of desktop VMs.
• Install required Microsoft Windows patches — For Windows XP desktop VMs, make sure you have RDP patches referenced by Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) articles 323497 and 884020. Failure to do this may result in a Windows Sockets failed error message on the client. You can find these KB articles at the following URLs:
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323497
  • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/884020
• It is recommended that you upgrade VDM Client machines to use Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 6.0 — This recommendation applies to machines running Windows XP and Windows XPe. Windows 2000 does not support RDC 6.0.Windows Vista comes with RDC 6.0 installed.RDC 6.0 can be downloaded at the following Microsoft download site: Microsoft downloads
• VDM does not support using link-local (169.254.x.x) addresses for desktop virtual machines — Configure desktop virtual machines to use DHCP or static IP addresses.