Mattermost Desktop - Windows 11 Gold VDI Non persistent

Troubleshooting
1

Summary
I’ve just installed Mattermost following this guide Desktop MSI installer and group policy guide - Mattermost documentation on a Windows 11 VDI gold image, this is for Omnissa Horizon and we also use Microsoft FSLogix for profiles, I also used the ALLUSERS=1 option

After I’ve published the new image and open Mattermost I get the following error

Application: Mattermost 5.13.0
Platform: Windows_NT 10.0.26100 x64
Error: EEXIST: file already exists, mkdir ‘C:\Users\RANDOMUSERNAMEHERE\AppData\Roaming\Mattermost’
at mkdirSync (node:fs:1363:26)
at t.mkdirSync (node:electron/js2c/node_init:2:17257)
at j.writeFile (C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:136753)
at j.loadLocalConfigFile (C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:135033)
at j.reload (C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:133208)
at j.init (C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:132892)
at C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:1515589
at new Promise ()
at C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:1515381
at yr (C:\Program Files\mattermost-desktop\resources\app.asar\index.js:2:1515736)

Also if I go into my profile appdata\roaming\mattermost\logs, theres a file called main.txt and that contains
[2025-08-22 14:24:04.538] [error] Logger Log level set to: info
[2025-08-22 14:24:04.672] [warn] [Config] app-update.yml does not exist, disabling auto-updates
[2025-08-22 14:24:04.672] [warn] [Config] Failed to load configuration file from the filesystem. Using defaults.
[2025-08-22 14:24:07.674] [error] [MainWindow] Unable to send the message to the main window for message type update-downloads-dropdown

I’ve also checked the local registry and the DefaultServerList has been populated which comes from a GPO setting.

I’ve deleted my FSLogix profile and created a new one and exactly the same issue

Any ideas?
Thanks

2

Hello,

I’ve got further information if it helps.

On our Windows 10 golden image, we have Mattermost 8.5.1 (where it works) and I copied the contents of c:\program files\mattermost\desktop into the same path but on our windows 11 machine and it works as expected.

So it appears it’s something not liking something with the latest MSI version, I’ve not tried any other MSI versions as it’s a fairly time consuming process of installing, sealing, deploying.

Not too sure if it matters but it looks like 8.5.1 was the latest version offering .exe installation.

The problem with running 8.5.1 is it’s very old, but it works.

Please advise

3

Thanks for sharing the detailed troubleshooting steps, @danoid! Since Mattermost 5.13.0 (MSI) is much newer than 8.5.1 it may be related to how profiles are handled in non-persistent VDI with FSLogix. I’d recommend testing one of the latest supported MSI builds, and confirming whether the roaming profile path permissions align with the updated installer’s expectations.

4

Hello,

I was using the latest version to start with but had the same issue, but I didn’t with 8.5.1.

I have however just resolved this, but it’s a bodge and not entirely happy, but it loads.

As my gold image is a VM I reverted back to the snapshot where Mattermost was not installed, I then do the following

Download the latest .msi, loaded up CMD then CD to my downloads folder and ran the following

msiexec /i mattermost…..msi ALLUSERS=1

I then headed to c:\users\localadmin\appdata\roaming\maatermost and opened config.json and changed some things like removing “downloadLocation” remove autostart, disabled acceleration.

I then copied the entire mattermost folder and pasted into c:\users\default\appdata\roaming

I then sealed the image, published, and logged in using a standard domain account and boom it opened.

Why i’ve had to do that i’m really not sure, I don’t know if the Omnissa OS Optimization Tool has done something or FSLogix, or Windows 11.

I did even update our Windows 10 gold image to the latest version by just using msiexec /i mattermost…..msi ALLUSERS=1, this Windows 10 gold image also has the same FSLogix version and that worked perfectly.

So going by that it appears Windows 11 is doing something different, as it’s the only difference between our Windows 10 and Windows 11 gold images.

I’ve also installed many other applications on the Windows 11 gold image and Mattermost was the only problem child, very odd!

1 Like