Add "userless" mode to service
Drew Wallace
This would allow a user to connect to the host machine before anyone has logged in on the machine yet. This is helpful if you have to restart your PC remotely and still need to use it after the restart.
Obviously there is security concerns with enabling this. There should be an option to enable this in the settings. It should be off by default. There should also be some extra layer of security before you can successfully start streaming. This could be: Requiring a second entry of your password, or some sort of 2-factor authentication.
Ryan Ewen
I would really like this but for another reason which is that I have family members with their own Windows accounts, game libraries, and saves.
We would love to just turn on the PC and any of us connect via Parsec, without first signing into Windows accounts or worrying about who was signed in last. However, the way it appears to work for me today is something like this:
* Parsec must be installed and configured on each of our Windows accounts (despite it being installed into a global folder). Not a problem but not ideal. At least the same Parsec account works on each instance.
* The user(s) wishing to stream must be logged in to Windows so that their Parsec instance is running. They can disconnect/lock their Windows account but it must remain logged in to keep Parsec running, which will not be the case after a reboot. Mildly annoying for me, deal breaker for Wife.
* Multiple Windows accounts can be logged in at the same time with their Parsec instances running. This is great.. but see the next point.
* Only the latest Windows user to unlock their account can connect to Parsec. Other users are SOL, even if the latest user is fully logged out of Windows and their Parsec instance killed. Eg, if User A streams then locks their account, or fully logs out, then User B will experience a crash when they try to connect to their Parsec instance in their Windows account. However if User B unlocks their Windows account then Parsec will begin to work for them (even if all they do is immediately lock their account after unlocking it).
There is a bit of a weird workaround to the last-user-signed-in thing which is that if you can figure out who was last signed in, you can connect to their Parsec instance and then lock the machine, and then unlock the account with the desired instance. Parsec will crash but the physical machine will have logged into the desired account, meaning you can now use that instance of Parsec to connect again.
Cesar Schrega
Upvoting, currently my work-around to this is actually login to my machine after a reboot with RDP, sign in then 'switch user' (to get the computer back to use local display adapter) and then quickly connect Parsec before its too late.... just too much of a hassle -.-
Corom
Cesar Schrega: I'm very very late to this, but if you use VNC you can connect to RDP from anywhere and it defaults to using the local display adapter.