What to do if the OS is corrupted and doesn’t boot anymore

Unfortunately, virtual desktops are not immune to software corruptions, just like a physical PC, so, if any of the components of the OS is involved, it may not boot anymore.

The most common events that could lead to OS corruption are:

• suddenly powering off (or resetting) your virtual desktop without proper shutdown;
• system update/upgrade failure (in particular when the system is powered off during the process);
• third-party software installation (especially malware);
• improper editing of system settings;
• system hacking (in particular if you have a public IPv4 address).

How to fix it

Since the OS doesn’t boot, you can’t use RDP/NX (or any other third party software) to access your virtual desktop, so you have no other choice than using VNC.

At this point, you can try the following options:

• start the automatic repair (if available) and let the system to heal itself;
• boot the system with the Last Known Good Configuration (Windows only);
• boot the system in fail safe-mode / recovery mode and manually fix the problem;
• restore an earlier backup image of your virtual desktop (may erase recent data);
• reinstall your system from scratch (this will erase all current data).

How to recover your data if you can’t fix the OS

In case you failed to fix the OS, but need to recover some important data from the virtual desktop, we can offer to attach its virtual drive to a new virtual desktop as a secondary drive, so that you can pick up and transfer the files you need, as long as they are not encrypted or corrupted.

If you wish to proceed with this solution, please submit a ticket.

The secondary drive will last for 3 days only, then it will be deleted.