Pulse Secure Application Launcher not detected on subsequent launches

[ggiles]

Hi Everyone,

I have a weird issue going on.  We are using pulse secure 9.1.15 in our VDI environment, these are instant clones in vmware horizon, and users have roaming profiles.   When a user logs in, they can connect/launch the pulse VPN without issue.  It launches the embedded web browser and works flawlessly.  

However, if they disconnect from the vpn, and attempt to re-connect at some future point, the embedded web browser doesn't launch, and IE launches instead, which goes to the "Please wait, launching pulse secure" page, and freezes.  If you click "Recover webpage" and select "Start" on pulse secure, it just cycles back to the launching page, and freezes again.

Has anyone experienced this before?

[zanyterp]

how are you installing the client?
do you have the embedded browser option enabled on the appliance?
without seeing anything, it sounds like there is a setting being pushed down that removes the embedded browser support

[ggiles]

We install both the client and PSAL via msi on the golden image.  I do not have access to the appliance (I just manage the VDI environment) but I can forward any request to the admin.  However, the embedded browser launches/works fine the first time you launch pulse secure.  However, short of logging out of windows, and back in (which would generate a new virtual machine for you), the embedded browser does not launch a second time.

This is only in this pool/environment. So I'm sure it has to be a roaming profiles/instant clone issue.  Our persistent Virtual Machines, and physical devices don't have this issue.

[zanyterp]

does that master config have a persistent file?
what you are describing could be caused by the configuration file that allows for the embedded browser to be used being removed by some process…whether it is on the appliance or the nature of roaming profiles (not a supported use case), i do not know

[ggiles]

It does not have a configuration file. It's just the ps-pulse-win-9.1r15.0-b15819-64bit-installer.msi that we run on the image.

[zanyterp]

ok, thank you for letting me know
if you do not have roaming profiles, does it change the behavior?

[ggiles]

Ah, Just when I thought I had thought of everything. I spun up a new pool of instant clones, but these did not have roaming profiles configured, and lo and behold it worked fine. Any idea what is happening in the profile that may be causing that?