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Network Drives: Accessing your U drive from home

Go to www.portageps.org and click Faculty and Staff, then the VMWare Virtual Desktop button.




Click on the image labeled VMWare Horizon View HTML Access

You will be prompted to enter your PortagePS credentials (you do not need to add the @portageps.org here). Click Log In.



You will be prompted to choose a desktop configuration. Click on Staff Floating (Windows 7).



You will see a swirling status icon. Wait for this, and the loading of the rest of the virtual desktop, and you will be rewarded with a Windows 7 desktop running inside of your browser window.



Performance of this virtual desktop is directly related to the speed of your internet connection, and the speed of your home computer. If you want files out of your U drive to work on at home, the best option right now is to email the file(s) to yourself or upload them to Google Drive.

If you are a fairly tech savvy person, you could also download the client onto your home computer. For instructions on how to do this, click here. This will provide you with a smoother experience that will not depend as heavily on your Internet connection.
Note: you are not logging in to your teacher station directly with this, merely using a generic “virtual” computer that doesn’t even really exist, except for a data file on a server.

When you are finished with whatever you need to do in this machine, select Start>Shut Down, as you would with your teacher stations.



This brings you back to the VMWare Horizon View screen, where you should log out again.



And you’re done!

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