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User profile for user: chrsan59
chrsan59 Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Respondus Lockdown Browser has detected a Virtual Machine

Hi there.


This question is about an error a 3rd party app recently started throwing up on my device. I don't know if it can be asked here but I would like to bring this up as the company that created the product refuses to give any insight or even check my device for that matter.


So here is the heart of the matter. While attending an online exam conducted by my university using Respondus Lockdown Browser for quite sometime now, it just throws an error message saying it has detected an instance of a vm running on my machine. Sounds simple enough, delete any vm based software or better yet install a fresh install of macOS and this should fix itself right? Well not quite. Even after installing a fresh copy of macOS Catalina 10.15.6 on my machine this issue seems to persist in this software. It doesn't happen on another device as I did try to replicate this on my friend's Mac but it seemed to work fine there.


So I was wondering if I can get some insight so as to explain to what may contribute to "why ONLY MY DEVICE is being detected as a VM/RUNNING INSTANCE OF VM even after a FRESH INSTALL OF MACOS"


The viewpoints I would like to be considered are:

  1. is my hardware misbehaving in some way or form
  2. is my software ie. operating system misbehaving in some way or form


My device specifications are as follows:

MacBook Pro 2017 Base Model without TouchBar

8GB RAM 128 GB SSD

macOS Catalina 10.15.6 (fresh install)


Any help, ideas or suggestions gladly welcome.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 6, 2020 12:55 AM

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User profile for user: Barney-15E
Barney-15E
User level: Level 10
112,620 points

Aug 6, 2020 6:30 AM in response to chrsan59

Sounds more like Respondus is misbehaving. I doubt you have any recourse with them as they will deny, deny, deny, counter accuse, then blow you off.


Was your friend's Mac also running Catalina? Catalina splits the drive into two parts, with the OS being mounted Read Only and your Data on a second volume (R/W). The software may be confused by this arrangement.

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User profile for user: chrsan59
chrsan59 Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Aug 6, 2020 9:38 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you for the comforting words. I thought that I was the only one facing this form of denial from their customer support team.


Yes they keep on denying me till date with their template reply stating "The signature of your device corresponds to that of a virtual machine. Kindly use another device." And sometimes they just don't reply at all.


Yes me and my friend both run the same version 10.15.6.


So here's the thing Respondus was actually working fine on Catalina (with the two part drive setup) until one day their software auto-updated itself. After that it's the error message each and every day.


But it also raises another question. There are many other Macs running Respondus and even after the update everything works fine. So what went wrong here?

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Respondus Lockdown Browser has detected a Virtual Machine

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