VMware View desktops appear in an “Already Used” state

Was researching an issue for a customer yesterday morning and ran across a few articles mentioning this “Already Used” issue.  It was not really the problem I was looking for.  Ironically, yesterday afternoon, I had a call with a different customer that described this issue exactly.  At that point, I had to post it.

Here’s the issue:

after a user logs off, a desktop in a linked clone pool goes into an “Already Used” state and stays there.  No users can use it until it is refreshed by an admin.  I found numerous references to this issue but no definitive answers.  I even found this KB Article on vmware.com and it’s resolution is to just refresh the desktop (#EpicFail).  That was until I ran across this post in the Community Forums by Paul Woodhouse.

The issue is caused by the user selecting to shutdown the desktop instead of logoff.  Instead of refreshing the desktop, VMView restarts the desktop and puts it in an “Already Used” state.  I believe this may be by design to protect it from being used until an admin can review it (just speculating here).  Whatever the reason, this desktop cannot be used by anyone else until it is refreshed by an administrator.

Paul writes in the article that you can set the default option to logoff and also provides a script to run thru the desktops to look for any in the affected state and reset them in one shot.  I agree with one of the comments to the article.  I recommend removing the shutdown and reset options from the logoff button completely via Group Policy.  There is no reason to give users those options in a VDI environment.  Especially when you are using linked clones that are refreshed on logoff.  As reported later in the comments, removing the shutdown and reset options  from Win7 eradicated the issue completely from the environment.

Good luck.

UPDATE: It just occured to me that this is a user policy.  If you want to remove these options from the VDI desktops but not the user’s desktop or laptop, you have to turn on Group Policy Loopback mode and apply the GPO to the OU with the desktops.  This will apply this user GPO to all of the VDI desktops only.