Hello everyone,
We are having a problem and I wanted to see if anyone else is having it/it makes sense as to how we are looking at it.
We have several iMacs running Parallels 3 with XP SP2 installed inside a virtual machine. All the users in question run in full screen mode, since they do not use anything on the Mac side. We also have a WSUS server distributing updates to our clients.
It seems to correlate that every time Microsoft sends out an update that requires a restart, when the users come in the next day, the Mac will not allow the user to log in. The mouse cursor comes up, however, the log prompt does not come up (We have the Macs set to force the user to authenticate after the screen saver kicks in). The only way to get the user back into the system is to power it down or issue the shutdown -r command remotely.
My theory on this is this:
I have noticed that Windows/Parallels is an attention hog. On my machine I run XP on my number 1 desktop in spaces. Whenever it needs the slightest thing, it automatically switches the space so I can do something as simple as see that Outlook has a new email. So my thought is that when WSUS forces the client machine to restart after the update, Windows/Parallels takes all the attention of the screen. Then in the morning when the user tries to log in, the Mac side doesn't see the mouse or the keyboard because Windows/Parallels has the screen taken over.
If some one else has been noticing this, do you agree with my assessment? If you haven't, does this make since, or am I seeing another known issue?
If this is the issue, what can be done about it? We don't want to not have the users not authenticate on the Mac side after they step away from their desk as that poses a security risk. We, also, want to keep Windows updated.
Thoughts, comments, suggestions.
~Keegan
Last edited: Jan 14, 2009
