Environment

• Windows Vista 32-bit virtual desktop image.
• vSphere ESXi Ver 4.1
• VMware View 4.5
• Windows Server 2008 STD
• Two ESXi hosts Dell R910
• Smart Card Authentication with Single Sign On from soft client to the virtual desktop
• SAN: Dell/EMC Clarion with three Tiers of storage: FC disk for servers, SSD for replicas, SATA drives for linked-clones/temp disks.
• User profiles are redirected to persistent disks.

Issue

• We create a desktop pool of 10 virtual machines from parent VM.
• Users log in the first time and everything works as expected.
• User creates a document on the desktop and adds a link to Favorites.
• User logs off.
• We recompose or refresh the desktop.
• User logs back in after the process is done. Windows creates a second profile on the persistent disk. If we refresh the desktop again and the user logs back in, a third profile is created e.g. username, username.domain, username.domain.001, etc.
• User can get access to the all duplicated profiles and the changes are there so the profile is kept. No access rights issue.
• Problem happens only when we recompose or refresh. If we do not recompose or refresh, the user logs in with the same profile (issue does not exist)

Troubleshooting Steps Taken

• Checked that the parent VM did not have any domain or user profile before snapshoting it for linked-clone provisioning.
• Checked View Agent version installed was the latest one.
• Checked AD permissions.
• Rebuilt the parent VM from scratch to ensure that the image was as prestine as it can be.
• Virtual machine Windows License is activated.

Another problem shown is that the Backup Tab of the View Manager Configuration (View Configuration > Server > Edit > Backup) shows the backup folder location, but does not allow us to change it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.