Citrix FAQ

- as compiled by Shawn Bass


​Q: I'm new to Citrix, where do I get started on learning how to administer it and troubleshoot issues? A: To begin I'd recommend reading the Admin Guides that are available on Citrix's website. Here's a KB article that lists all of the Admin Guides: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107618

Citrix is also placing all documentation online now at Citrix eDocs: http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/index.jsp?lang=en
I'd also recommend reading an overall instructional book on Citrix/Terminal Services such as the freely downloadable books from BrianMadden.com or Doug Brown's Methodology in a Box.
Lastly I would recommend getting the Citrix Brief Troubleshooting Guide which is an excellent reference guide with admin related info across several of Citrix's products: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106727
Q: How can I teach my software developers to develop their software to be compatible with Terminal Services? A: Microsoft published documentation for developers around the NT4/Win2k Terminal Services offering. Much of the information in this article is still relevant in 2003 TS. Here is a link for the MSDN article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms811523.aspx
Q: Is ClearType supported in ICA sessions? A: It is supported on 2003 SP1 with KB946633 and PS 4.5 with http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX117434 or just anything after R02. However, ClearType is supported out of the box on XenApp 5.0+ on Server 2008 and above. Keep in mind that ClearType or Font Smoothing has a dramatic impact on bandwidth consumed. See the following: http://blogs.sepago.de/helge/2007/08/19/bandwidth-requirements-for-cleartype-over-rdp/ http://blogs.sepago.de/helge/2007/09/19/cleartype-bandwidth-revisited-testing-32-bit-color-depth/
Q: My server beeps when I login to it. A: See the following KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/901115/en-us
Q: Where do I set my Terminal Services licensing mode? A: There are two things that need to be taken care of. On your licensing server, you must have license CALs added for whatever mode you're using (Device or User - technically User CALs aren't tracked so you don't REALLY need them, but...) Next, you need to set the TS Licensing Mode on your Terminal Servers. If you're running 2003 SP1, uou can do this via Group Policy under Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Terminal Services->Terminal Server Licensing Mode. Enable the policy setting and pick either Per User or Per Device. Alternatively, you can run the Terminal Server Configuration tool (tscc.msc) and choose the mode there, but you'll need to do this manually on each server since the default it Per Device licensing. It's better to use Group Policy.
Citrix Licensing Q: License Management console - Is there any way to add groups to User Admin. No.
Q: License Management console - Is there any way to programmatically add users. Yes. You need to edit the tomcat-users.xml file in the LMC\Tomcat\conf folder and build out strings containing info like this after the role definition:

 <user username="DOMAIN\USERNAME" password="" fullName="John Doe LMC" roles="lmc-access-role,lmc-current-usage-role,lmc-historical-usage-role,lmc-configuration-role,lmc-user-admin-role"/>

Of course you would customize the username, fullname, and roles specific to what you wanted to grant and whom you wanted to grant it to. NOTE: It's very important to know that this file (much like several other Citrix config files is a UTF-8 formatted text file. If you do not edit the file in unicode format, your changes may not take and/or you may corrupt the tomcat-users.xml file. It's always a good idea to back it up.
Q: What port does the License Management Console use? A: The tomcat process runs on port TCP/8009.
App Strategies and Load Mgmt Q: I'm having problems with session sharing. How do I troubleshoot this? A: By default Presentation Server will attempt to perform session sharing of any published app requests to minimize server resource consumption. Session sharing is a function of Presentation server that will simply spawn a process within an existing user's session as opposed to create a brand new session on the same or another server. If you are not session sharing (i.e. a request for a published app is showing up under a different session ID or on another server entirely, then generally the solution will be through reviewing the following questions:
a) Is the new published app being requested already published on the server you're on? Citrix will not session share if the requested app isn't published on the server where the user's session is currently executing.
b) Are your published application parameters the same between your published apps (i.e. Color depth, Screen Size, Access Control Filters (for SmartAccess), Sound, Drive Mapping, Printer Mapping)? If these parameters are different between published apps, then you won't session share. In general it's a best practice to create one template published application and duplicate it when creating all other published apps to ensure they are all the same settings.
c) Is Session Sharing disabled on this server? There is a registry value called SeamlessFlags under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Citrix\Wfshell\TWI if SeamlessFlags is set to 1, then Session Sharing will not work.
d) Is the server full (i.e. load index reports 10000 in query farm /load). Starting with MFXP R02, by default fully loaded servers will refuse a Session Sharing request and will instead force the user to a new session on a different server. If you wish to disable this functionality, and force them onto the same server, you need to change the SeamlessFlags registry entry to include the bitmask 0x100 value which will disable the load check on a Session Sharing request. See the following KB article for more info: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX101644
e) Finally if none of this answered your question, check the following KB article titled "Troubleshooting and Explaining Session Sharing": http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX159159
Q: I'm receiving a message about the ICA Seamless Host Agent when I connect to my published desktop through Web Interface. Why is this happening and how to do I stop it? A: This is happening because Web Interface forces all applications to run in seamless mode by default. When an ICA Desktop session is run in Seamless mode it will cause this message to appear. To avoid this, you can manually disable Seamless Windows after a user has logged into Web Interface by clicking on the icon named "Click here to customize the user interface" from within the logged in Web Interface session. Then under Connection Preferences, you can change Seamless to a specific Window size, etc. The problem with this solution is that each user needs to know to do this before launching their desktop session and this will affect all published applications/desktops that are run via Web Interface. The preferred approach to do this is to modify your default.ica/template.ica within Web Interface and create an override definition for a specific published application name. Within the default.ica, you would create a new section and value as follows to diable Seamless Windows for a published desktop named "MyCo Desktop"
[MyCo Desktop] TWIMode=Off
Add this section to your default.ica file and when that specific published app/desktop is executed, it will not be run in seamless mode. This will then allow all of the rest of your published applicatiosn to execute in seamless mode. You can also force a specific resolution by using the DesiredWinType parameter (an example of this can be found in the following forum post here): http://support.citrix.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=597973)
To get a better understanding of the parameters in the .ica file that can be overridden, see INI file reference document here: http://ctxex10.citrix.com/kb/entry!default.jspa?categoryID=148&entryID=80
Q: Session shared apps that appear under the same session id, but show a different published app name. A: This can be caused by users launching applications too quickly from within Web Interface/Nfuse. I've confirmed this on PS4 though PS4 seems to modify the CMC to collapse the sessions after a few seconds. If this is occurring with the same published app you could implement the 1Click solution.
Q: Some applications terminate/exit/logoff before the user actually gets the published application to load A: The Citrix Logoff Checker process that terminates processes and unloads a user session when a user logs off has some timing issues in it's detection methods for user processes. As a result there are certain circumstances where a published application may be immediately exited when it's launched. The LogOffCheckSysModules key usually exacerbates this issue. If you are running on MetaFrame XP/PS3/PS4 you can set the following key to get the logoff checker routine to wait for 5 seconds before checking for no applications to exist before logging the session off:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM CurrentControlSet\Control\Citrix\Wfshell\TWI Name: IntervalsForLogoffCheck Type: REG_DWORD Value: 5000 Decimal <this is time, in milliseconds>
This being said, if you're on PS4 there is a hotfix (it's #17 for Win2k/2003) that fixes the broken detection mechanism (this hotfix is superceded by Rollup 2). This hotfix also fixed the problems with the Input Method Editor/Language bar/CTFMON process from an Office install.
Q: I'm having issues with my application where it won't run in seamless windows mode and I have to force it to run in a fixed resolution or percentage of screen size. What could I do to troubleshoot this? A: Citrix has as registry value called SeamlessFlags where you can alter the behavior of the seamless windows engine's hooks into the graphics subsystem for a particular application. There is a description of the SeamlessFlags values and information on what eat bit position does in Citrix KB CTX101644. The specific seamless flags entries that you'd want to investigate are the seamless flags that pertain to a specific applications windows as listed in the last part of the document. The section is named "Seamless Per Application Window Registry Flags". Unfortunately there's not a good way to know exactly which seamless flag will fix your application rendering problems, and you should approach it as a trial and error process flipping each bit until you isolate the specific seamless flag that fixed your app display issue.
User Environment Q: Can I avoid the use of a profile on TS entirely? (for speed and/or security/privacy reasons) A: No. Microsoft has confirmed that some sort of profile must be used in order to function in order to run applications in Windows.
Q: How can I hide drives from my user's view? A: There's two Explorer registry settings that can be used to restrict access to specific drive letters from the user's view. The items are located under HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer and are called NoDrives and NoViewOnDrive. You can create your own ADM file to implement these settings or you can download the True Control Template from Login Consultants which already has these settings in it. If you implement this manually on your own you need to keep in mind that this value requires you to AND the values of the drives to hide. The easiest way to come up with the list of items is to use one of the HideDrive Excel spreadsheets to calculate the AND'd value of the decimal representation of each drive letter (i.e. A=1, B=2, C=4, D=8, etc). A spreadsheet to calculate this is included in the Login Consultant's True Control Template.
Q: How do I disable Sticky Keys A: You need to make a registry modification in each user's registry.
To disable [HKCU\Control Panel\Accessibility\StickyKeys] "Flags"="506"
To enable [HKCU\Control Panel\Accessibility\StickyKeys] "Flags"="510"
You could use the above values to create a Group Policy ADM, or just get the True Control template from Login Consultants, there's an option in there to disable sticky keys.
Q: Upgraded to IE7 and now the IE Branding is taking forever (this also applies to IE8) A: This is due to a bug with the iedkcs32.dll that performs branding in IE7. MS has a hotfix for this issue, see: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941158 To see if you're affected, check the brndlog.txt in %UserProfile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer to see if you're showing a 20 second delay.
Q: Why is it taking so long for my users to login? A: Maybe this: 20 second delay during access to redirected folder on 2003 SP1 (causes logon delays): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899409/en-us
Q: I'm having issues with Client Drives not being mapped. What should I check first? A: Citrix has a pretty extensive KB article on this issue. Troubleshooting Various Client Drive Mapping Issues - http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX238200
Q: Profiles are not unloading on my systems, what do I do? A: There are many reasons why this may be happening. Here's some things to check: a. Is the session actually logging off in the first place? An active session's profile will never unload. b. Is there a child process that's keeping the session from logging off. See the slides on LogOffCheckSysModules for more info. c. Are you running UPHClean? UPHClean is a must in a TS environment as it forcefully closes stuck registry handles, etc. d. Are you running on a VMWare platform where you're using the Shared Folder support or are you using Java components? See the following article on Thomas Koetzing's website. -The file hgfs.dat can not be deleted on VMware Machines -The folder hsperfdata is not deleted from the Profile? http://www.thomaskoetzing.de/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99&Itemid=166
Q: You mentioned User Environment Debug Logging as a way of troubleshooting long login times, etc on Server 2003. Where do I enable it? A: User Env Debug Logging - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221833
Printing - When installing XenDesktop / XenApp on servers with .NET 3.5 SP1 you may receive error messages about unsigned drivers. See the following MS KB: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961118
- Gavan Smythe / Doug Brown Default Printer Retension process: http://www.dabcc.com/article.aspx?id=1270
- Login consultants utility for connecting network printers (Called Flexible Printer Mapper written by Stefan Barthel) Was available for download at the www.briforum.com site for the 2006 BriForum Europe session.
- Citrix StressPrinters for testing print drivers on TS/Citrix platform for multithreading, crashing issues. Again, my testing process is 1 driver at a time. Run 5 concurrent add attempts for 20 iterations. After the success (or failure) or each driver, reset the Spooler and CPSvc services and then run the next driver. Do not do this on a production server as you might crash it. http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX109374
- HP Printer Compatibility List http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110571
Q: When admins login to my server via RDP, there's printer drivers getting installed on my system. What can I do? - You need to disable Windows Point and Print functionality. The best method I have found is to rename the NTPRINT.INF file to NTPRINT.INF.OLD. I do this in a server startup script in case someone renames it back. You will need to rename the NTPRINT.INF back to it's original name if you want to install any print drivers on the server.
Q: I'm using UPDv3 and it's working well, but I'm still seeing all of these 1106 Autocreation print failures. What's the deal? A: Citrix will still attempt the client printer autocreation and register the 1106 error even when UPDv3 is doing it's job. To suppress this error, check the following KB article. Suppress 1106 errors (Autocreation driver mapping problems) when using UPDv3 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX488760
Web Interface and SG Q: My Web Interface users keep seeing a message saying "Click here if you are not automatically redirected", why is this happening? A: This is due to IIS6's built in worker process recycling. You can safely disable this or at least reduce the number of recycles to reduce/eliminate the code JIT'ing that is occuring (The .NET code gets recompiled each time the worker process is recycled in IIS). See Jay Tomlin's blog entry for more info on this: http://www.jaytomlin.com/blog/2006/10/please_click_here_if_you_are_n.html
Q: My WAN Citrix users frequently drop their ICA sessions. A: See the slide in the deck that discusses CSG disconnection reasons. If you are not running through CSG and this is pure ICA over private network connections, have you adjusted the TCPMaxDataRetransmission values on your Citrix servers? See the following KB articles for more info. (NOTE: These settings apply whether you are using CSG or not - it's imperative that you use this on any Citrix servers receiving connections from WAN clients): http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX435418&searchID=34514326 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/170359/en-us
In the slidedeck I also make a reference to the Nagle algorithm that may be causing these problems if your firewall is setup to use the Nagle algorithm for TCP batching of traffic. As we said before, ICA/SSL is not HTTPS. Read more about the Nagle algorithm in this KB article: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX103192&searchID=34514814
Q: My users are timing out of Web Interface, what's the deal? A: The session timeout isn't controlled by IIS since WI3/4 are .NET Framework apps, it is controlled in the web.config for the site. See the following KB for more info: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX103672
Q: I receive error messages from Web Interface that says “An internal error occurred. Please contact your administrator.”. I am the administrator, what do I do to troubleshoot? A: Disable the custom error handler on Web Interface to be able to see the entire stack trace from .NET. See KB: http://ctxex10.citrix.com/kb/entry.jspa?externalID=CTX103673
Q: You mentioned something in class about the Nagle algorithm and it's affect on Citrix Secure Gateway. Where can I find more info? A: TCPNoDelay / Nagle Algorithm affecting CSG performance/connectivity: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX103192
Q: I'm having problems with ICA 9.x clients connecting through my CSG 3.0 environment. What do I check? A: There's a patch for SG 3.0 that resolves this issue. This was first fixed in SGE300W003 (CTX110661), but was later superceded by SGE300W008 (CTX114059) ICA Client 9.2 connecting to CSG 3.0 with Session Reliability (Client can't connect, need to patch Secure Gateway) http://knowledgebase.citrix.com/article/CTX114059 (this is SGE300W008) NOTE: There is a bug with the installation of SGE300W008. If you don't have MSVCR71.DLL in the Windows System32 directory (or in the search path), then after the hotfix is installed it will fail to start the Secure Gateway service. To resolve the issue, get a copy of the MS Visual C Runtime (msvcr71.dll) from elsewhere on disk or another system and copy it into the System32 folder on your Secure Gateway system.
High Availability and Redundancy Q: I need to know how to setup a good DR strategy for my Citrix infrastructure. Where can I learn more? A: We cover this in the HA module, but for an additional guide, check the following Citrix KB article.
Citrix Access Suite 4.0 - Disaster Recovery Planning and Configuration http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107597
Performance and Troubleshooting Q: During the training class you mentioned several Windows Explorer optimizations that should be made on Terminal Server environments. What are they? A: We discussed some of these during the class, but there's a great writeup on the Ask Perf Team blog on this topic here: http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/09/21/windows-explorer-and-smb-traffic.aspx
Q: I'm having scalability issues on my Windows 2000 Terminal Servers, and you mentioned in class that there is a fixed boundary between System PTEs and Paged Pool memory. A: That is correct, on 2000 Terminal Servers the boundary between Paged Pool and System PTEs is fixed at boot time and there's no way to adjust it dynamically. If you use PoolMon and/or a Live Kernel debugger, you can determine the appropriate allocation for each of these in your environment. The following KB article describes the process and the necessary registry entries to make once you've done this: "How to Configure the Paged Address Pool and System Page Table Entry Memory Areas" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247904 Alternatively, use 2003 Terminal Server which does not have the same kernel memory allocations.
Q: I'm having issues with the Language Bar / CTFMon A: There's several articles that discuss ways to manage CTFMon/Language Bar. "How to Hide the Language Bar in Seamless ICA Sessions" http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX113114
Specifically this article references a MS KB article on the proper method to remove/disable the CTFMON component: "Frequently asked questions about ctfmon.exe" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599
Alternatively, many people simply remove execute rights from ctfmon.exe and MSCTF.DLL for their users to prevent it from running or use a Software Restriction Policy in GPO to block execution. Microsoft seems to indicate that this will cause problems in Office, but as I've said many people are doing this now.
Q: My Internet Explorer and/or Outlook are crashing all of the time. What can I check? A: This can be due to many reasons. The first things I would check are the following: 1) Is DEP (Data Execution Prevention) disabled in the Boot.ini file? DEP can sometimes cause apps to crash unexpectedly. Disabling DEP may be something to try if your apps are crashing without reason. See the following KB article for info on how to disable DEP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352 2) Do you have Citrix's Memory Optimization enabled? Memory optimization can sometimes cause issues that will make some programs crash (due to the memory rebasing facility). Start by disabling Memory Optimization, and then to clean the Alternate Data Streams from your DLLs, etc. you can run the ADSClean script available from Citrix here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX108542 You may also want to download the Memory Optimization Console from RTOSoftware to assist with diagnosing programs that are failing due to Memory Optimization. Get it here: http://www.rtosoft.com/products/Opt_Console/Optimization-Console.htm 3) Speedscreen Browser Acceleration can sometimes cause random application crashes for those applications that use a browser component (like IE/Outlook). To learn more about Citrix's API hooks, please refer to the following documents:
Citrix API Hooks (mfaphook.dll) Explained and Enumerated http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107824
Disabling Citrix API Hooks on a Per Application Basis http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107825
You can disable all Citrix hooks by following the advice in CTX107825, but if you're just interested in disabling Speedscreen Browser Acceleration for IE/Outlook, then you can just delete the following registry entries on your servers to disable Speedscreen Browser Acceleration for Outlook and IE: HKLM\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_Dlls\SpeedScreen\iexplore.exe HKLM\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_Dlls\SpeedScreen\outlook.exe NOTE: Doing so will eliminate the benefits that Speedscreen Browser Acceleration brings.
Q: You mentioned that Outlook PSTs over the network is a bad idea, why? A: It can result is all sorts of lockups/crashes and corruption. For a detailed explanation of the issue, view this AskPerf blog entry: http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/01/21/network-stored-pst-files-don-t-do-it.aspx
Q: Scalability of PS4 32-bit is significantly lower than that of MF XP and PS3: A: Essentially the reason why you’re probably seeing this problem is that Citrix changed the memory pool that the Citrix Winstation driver uses when it makes kernel memory allocations for ICA compression buffers between Citrix server and client. Prior to PS4, wdica.sys utilized the non-paged pool, but it now uses the paged pool. As I mentioned in class, the maximum paged pool size is determined by the operating system at boot time and isn’t something you can adjust during operation of the server. However, if you determine that you are in fact running out of paged pool memory, you could make some registry edits on the server to increase the maximum size of the paged pool allocation. This problem is much more common on Windows 2000 because of the issue that we talked about how Windows will load the registry hives for user profiles up to the maximum registry size limit into this paged pool allocation. On 2003, Windows doesn’t load the registry data in the paged pool resources in the same way so you should have more resources at your disposal. All of that being said, your issue is probably due to a depleted paged pool. You didn’t see this issue on XP/PS3 because it was allocating the memory in the non-paged pool. So, the key thing now is to figure out what specifically is depleting your paged pool resources and fix it. The only way to effectively do this is with a kernel debugger (LiveKD from SysInternals is a great choice because it’s a live debugger versus needing to down the environment). It's quite possible that a paged pool leak is happening because of your A/V software or something like that and it's causing your paged pool depletion which eventually leads to the inability to logon (rebooting the server may demonstrate this fact since the issue will go away until users start loading up the server again). Once you use the kernel debugger to find out what the depletion is being caused by, you then make a determination if you could live without that component. If not, then work with the vendor to fix their memory leak. If you find no memory leaks in your environment, then the best case scenario is to make a registry change to increase the maximum paged pool size. Keep in mind that increasing the paged pool size is going to deplete your System PTEs, so you’re going to want to monitor the PerfMon counters for Available System PTEs to ensure you don’t run out of them or the same issue will result. This will be a delicate balancing act that should result in some higher scalability once you find the sweet spot. Here is a link to a Citrix KB article that describes this issue and has some pointers for info on the kernel debugging process.
http://support.citrix.com/kb/entry.jspa?entryID=8794
With all of this information being said, 2003 x64 should be completely unaffected by this issue because of the significantly larger paged pool allocation.
Q: Outlook 2003 seems to be killing the performance on my Citrix boxes. Why is this? A: It's related to the RPC connection polling in Outlook 2003. See the following links for more info. Outlook 2003 Connection Polling: http://www.brianmadden.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=55966 http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;891536
Q: You mentioned in class that there's a way to shift the barrier between Paged Address Pool and System Page Table Entries on Windows 2000. Where do I find info on this? A: Microsoft covers this in a KB article. Windows 2000 Server: How to Configure the Paged Address Pool and System Page Table Entry Memory Areas http://support.microsoft.com/kb/247904
Management and Maintenance Q: How can I document the configuration of my PS4/XenApp environment? A: Ilja Godau has released a script on Brian Madden's site that uses MFCOM to document your farm configuration and then outputs it to an HTML file. A link to download this can be found here: http://www.brianmadden.com/content/article/Ilja-Godau-Releases-Tool-to-Automatically-Document-your-Citrix-PS4-Environments
Also checkout the following vended products: Ecora http://www.ecora.com Centralis Harvester: http://www.centralis.co.uk/harvester/
Q: How can I provide my Helpdesk staff with limited rights to perform basic administrative tasks in my farm? A: The CMC/PSC has the ability to restrict an administrators rights within the Management Console. However, once you restrict an admins ability to get at a folder of servers, you may want to restrict what rights they have to reset/shadow sessions, etc. You can set specific permissions on the ICA-TCP listener of each individual server via the registry. However, the setting is a binary string that is not easily constructed. To programmatically do this, get the TSConSec utility from Bas Blaauw. A copy of this utility is included in the True Control Template from LoginConsultants. Alternates to using a reduced access CMC would be to provide your helpdesk staff with command line utilities to logoff, reset, and shadow sessions, or you could roll your own web-based limited CMC/PSC using Visual Web Developer. Jason Conger did a session a BriForum that illustrated how to do this.
Q: Aside from using Citrix's driver replication, how else I can package/deploy print drivers? A: You can build print driver installation packages with some advanced packaging utilities like Wise/Installshield. Also, PrintMig from the Resource Kit can bulk export/import printer objects with drivers. Also checkout the DIFx tools (Driver Install Framework) from Microsoft. PrintMig: http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/techinfo/overview/printmigrator3.1.mspx DIFx: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/install/default.mspx Finally, Wilco van Bragt wrote an article on his site describing a scripted method for exporting/importing all of the print drivers from one system to another. Read here for more info: http://sbc.vanbragt.net/mambo/articles/managing-printer-drivers.html
Q: What should go in a server reboot script? A: Besides rebooting the server, other ideas are to: Warn the users, attempt to gracefully log them off, stop the spooler service and clear the print jobs, Run DelProf to clean up local profiles, finally reboot.
Q: How can I programmatically export/import published applications on my farm? A: There are several different techniques to do this that have surfaced over time. Historically people would use the APPSDK export utilities to export published app info to an .app file and then re-import it, but better tools have come along. You could roll your own solution using MFCOM, but Citrix provides a free utility on their Tools webpage called FarmAppUtil that allows you to export published application info into an XML file and then re-import it later. There are some known issues with this utility with Published Content and AIEs, but the source code is available so one could fix those things if desired. The link to this info is utility is here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107934
UPDATE: Jason Conger has released a Beta tool called Mobius that allows you to drag and drop published apps from one farm to another. Future releases will support policy copies as well. Get it from www.jasonconger.com
Q: How do I migrate my data store from Access to <blank> A: If you want to use MSDE there's a MigrateToMSDE located in the Support\MSDE folder. Read the PS4 Admin guide for detailed info on this migration and any gotchas related to MSDE (such as the connection limits, etc). If you have SQL/Oracle/DB2 in your environment, you'll use the DSMAINT MIGRATE command to move the datastore. This process is detailed in the Admin Guide. Keep in mind that after moving your datastore, you'll need to repoint the MF20.DSN on all your servers and at a minimum restart IMA, but rebooting is probably a better route.
Q: When I logon to my 2003 TS, I keep getting these dialogs about application crashes. A: This is the default behavior of 2003 server. It is part of Microsoft's Error Reporting services. You can optionally configure this to only display errors for critical events (i.e. non-app errors), or not display any errors at all (probably not recommended since it'll mask a potential problem). In addition, if you know there is a specific app that is always throwing errors that you know are not going to be fixed by the vendor, you can turn off error reporting on that specific app as well. You can do this manually on an individual server, or via Group Policy. See this MSDN article for more info on configuring Error Reporting: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/53987fc2-2953-4098-bdba-3ee8a77742001033.mspx?mfr=true
Q: On my 2003 servers I'm sick of seeing the dialog asking me to explain why I'm shutting down/restarting the server, etc. A: Server 2003 and XP do this by default, but it is configurable in Group Policy. The setting is located at: Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->System. The value is named "Display Shutdown Event Tracker"
- I'm publishing a copy of Explorer.exe for my users, why is this a bad practice? A: According to Citrix, it's unsupported as executing multiple instances of the renamed explorer.exe process can lead to session hangs and/or slow sessions. The preferred approach is to publish iexplore -e Read more about this in the following KB article: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX922603
Q: On Windows 2000 Servers sometimes users are unable to login as their profile can't load, drives do not map, etc. Error messages show up in the event log and error dialogs appear at logon time that say "The handle is invalid" A: Microsoft has a non-public hotfix KB899268 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/899268/en-us that fixed this issue which is due to a problem in the TCP transport driver. You need to call PSS to obtain the hotfix.
Q: You mentioned a way of fixing the missing performance counters that show up in the Event Viewer for Windows 2000 servers. How do I do this? A: Microsoft has a KB article on this. WARNING: It's a lengthy process. Manually rebuilding the Performance Counter Library Values: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300956/en-us
Enterprise Deployment Q: Is Presentation Server supported on 2003 R2? A: Generally yes, though there really are not any features in R2 that will help a Terminal Services environment (aside from ADFS if you're intending on using that). Citrix has a few KB articles about known issues with R2 and which features are supported. The primary problems around R2 are the inclusion of the .NET Framework 2.0 (which breaks the Access Suite Console, though there is a known workaround), and a broken server-side file type association issue (which there's a hotfix for). See the following KB articles for more info: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX109680 http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX112592
Q: Is 2003 SP2 supported on Presentation Server? A: Citrix supports PS3 through PS4.5 on 2003 SP2. Generally all of the broken issues are related to management consoles and have workarounds, however there is one issue with AIEs (Application Isolation Environments) that stop working under heavy utilization. That issue is still pending resolution. See the following KB article for more info: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX113035
Q: I've noticed that when trying to set Idle/Connect/Disconnection timers in the ICA-TCP listener, the options are showing up as being greyed out. Are the timers that I setup in Group Policy overriding the ICA listener's settings? A: Yes, the group policy settings affect every protocol (RDP and ICA). The best route to solve this issue is to use an ADM file to apply the specific registry settings for the ICA-TCP listener. This is explained in the following article: http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/RDP-GPO-Settings-Citrix-Servers.html
Q: How do I perform an unattended installation of XenApp? A: The PS4.x unattended installation process is covered in the PS 4.x Admin Guide. That being said Aaron Parker has two blogs entries covering unattended installation of PS 4.0 and PS 4.5 on his site www.stealthpuppy.com. We covered cloning and unattended deployment of XenApp 5.x and 6.x in the training class materials.
Q: I want to learn more about Citrix Installation Manager, where do I start? A: Obviously the Admin Guide for Installation Manager from Citrix is a good starting place. It can be found here: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106469 In addition, Alexander Ervik Johnsen from Norway has written a comprehesive guide on Citrix IM called the GIDWIM guide that can be obtained on his website: http://www.ervik.as/
Q: How do I correctly clone/image my XenApp servers. A: This is covered in the slides.
Other helpful links:
FIX: A .NET Framework 2.0 managed application that has an Authenticode signature takes longer than usual to start (all .NET 2.0 apps are authenticode signed by default. If you client system can't verify the CRL, then launch will be delayed by 20+ seconds - Citrix AMC affected by this) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936707
Configuring opportunistic locking in Windows (very important if you're using Access MDBs across the network - which hopefully you're not) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/296264
Error: 'An error occurred while making the requested connection' when Launching Applications from a XenApp 4.0 Farm through Web Interface 5.2 (covers changes needed if aggregating PS4.0 farm via WI 5.2) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX123003
DLL Search Order on Windows (very important for TS Home Setting) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682586(VS.85).aspx
The Citrix Presentation Server 4.5 Installation Effectively Hangs http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX113639
Installation of Hotfix Rollup Pack 5 on XenApp for Windows 2003 Takes a Significant Amount of Time to Complete http://support.citrix.com/article/ctx123520
Terminal Server registry settings for applications (TS Compatibility Flags) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186499
Change the registration port on XenDesktop VDA http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX117250
How to Upload an Intermediate Certificate on Citrix Access Gateway 4.5.x http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX111872
Access Management Console Presentation Server Extension 4.6.4 - Improves discovery time dramatically in farms with large numbers of Apps because AMC no longer queries published app properties during discovery http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX120575
A Windows Server 2003-based server may experience time-stamp counter drift if the server uses dual-core AMD Opteron processors or multiprocessor AMD Opteron processors (aka the negative ping time problem) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938448
The Definitive Guide to Zone Design - Citrix Blog http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/The+Definitive+Guide+to+Zone+Design
When to Design Multiple XenApp Farms http://community.citrix.com/display/xa/When+to+Design+Multiple+XenApp+Farms
Troubleshooting Server Hangs - Part One (AskPerf Blog) http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/09/25/troubleshooting-server-hangs-part-one.aspx
Terminal Server and connected Terminal Services clients pause when a Terminal Services client logs on or logs off (very important tuning) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324446
Microsoft Office XP Applications, Randomly, Become Unresponsive (shut off CTFMon.exe) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX104445
Performance problem because of contention on CmpRegistryLock http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;317357
When a user logs off a Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 or Service Pack 2-based terminal server, the terminal server may stop responding for several seconds http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927182
Determining page size for 64-bit Windows Server: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654
An update to turn off default SNP features is available for Windows Server 2003-based and Small Business Server 2003-based computers (Hotfix to disable scalable networking Pack in 2003 SP2 - can cause lots of TS performance issues and RDP/ICA connectivity problems if SNP is left enabled http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948496
Applications may not run correctly in a Terminal Services environment (SessionViewSize and SessionPoolSize description - quite common issue in TS environments) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/840342
User profiles are corrupted after you log off from a remote desktop session to a Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server on which Symantec AntiVirus 10.1 is installed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951029
You experience slow performance when you try to access shared resources by using Windows Explorer on a client computer that is running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 (aka redundant DFS referral bug) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/915377
You may receive DFS referrals that contain a list of random DFS targets, random SYSVOL or NETLOGON referrals, or experience slow performance when you access a shared folder in a DFS namespace on a Windows Server 2003-based computer (another DFS referral problem) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/905846
Server is unable to allocate memory from the system paged pool (check your file servers for these errors) http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;312362 http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;317249
CTX117446 - Registry Key Entries Used by XenDesktop http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX117446
Silently Installing the Windows Resource Kit (rktools) http://remstate.com/2008/05/21/the-windows-resource-kit/
An introduction to kernrate (the Windows kernel profiler) http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=45
You experience intermittent communication failure between computers that are running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 (Disable task offline and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904946/
Download Windows Symbol Packages (needed for analyzing kernel/user memory dumps) http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/DevTools/Debugging/symbolpkg.mspx
XenDesktop and Active Directory - Great blog by ex-Citrite Martin Maierhofer on how XenDesktop uses AD http://community.citrix.com/display/ocb/2008/03/28/XenDesktop+and+Active+Directory
How to Configure XenDesktop to Function Properly Without an Organizational Unit in Active Directory (covers the ListOfDDCS value I discussed during the class) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX118976
The Service Host process may stop unexpectedly in Windows Server 2003 (A Patch you might want to consider deploying to all of your 2003 servers - this exact scenario took most of one of my client's 2003 domain resources down) http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932762
Citrix KB: Troubleshooting Tools for Citrix Environments: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107572 (Great list of Citrix admin related utilities)
Pre-11.x ICA clients crash when accessing a 2008 TS: Apply MS KB949914 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949914
MFCOM query for ICA Client Version: http://support.citrix.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=72171
Adhoc RM ICA Client Query: http://support.citrix.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=426292
Citrix SMA User Account Recreation Tool for PS4.0: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX111464
MFCOM Class Diagram: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX111543
MFXP->PS4 Migration (PS4 Migration Guide) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX106832
MultiMonitor issues: Graphical Display issues in Multimonitor Setups (due to graphics buffer): http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX781561
PS4.0 + Rollup 2 w/ non 4:3 resolution monitors shows distorted images: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110829
Published Seamless Applications Maximize Across Multiple Monitors (Affects PS4 with Rollup 1 on 2003 w/o SP1 - fix by installing SP1) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX109486
Applications Unexpectedly Exit from Multiple Monitor Workstations (PS4/ICA9) http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX110301
- Teknica Tekstop tool for logging off specific users from command line: http://www.tekworkshop.com/welcome/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=67
www.appvirtguru.com - App-V (and other app virtualization) community site www.tmurgent.com - Independent consultant, expert on App-V and creator of free tools www.thomaskoetzing.de - All things Web Interface/Secure Gateway and good info on MF/PS in general www.virtualization.info - Great virtualization blog www.stealthpuppy.com - Aaron Parker's blog - has lots of info on unattended deployments www.sysprosoft.com - Utility to display User Environment Debug log in a more readable format http://blogs.technet.com/netmon - MS Network Monitor Blog Freeware MSI Authoring - Advanced Installer (somewhat limited)http://www.advancedinstaller.com/ Process Monitor: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/processmonitor.mspx
MS Script-o-matic 2.0 Tool - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09dfc342-648b-4119-b7eb-783b0f7d1178&displaylang=en MS LogParser 2.2 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en MS EventComb - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824209
ICA Client Installation GUIDs:
{80951CEC-32B6-4EDA-BDB1-83F0C9B6FAAE}
{D1480DF1-702F-4107-9364-DB630045E369}
{1F45D107-2440-4B2B-9CEA-BA1D27F727AA}
{C96059AC-F75A-404E-B3EC-D6B4EDE517A7}
{F5059DB1-B647-4EFF-9E2C-790C637E27A9}
{1C97FC2E-0B10-4C09-990D-D7D633E56585}
{DAA13EB6-C53F-4038-9880-C310500B49E9} = 6.30.1000
{3049E69E-74F2-48C0-B9A1-9CD8125588E9} = 6.31.1051
{521AC11F-8F53-47AA-B6D4-A90E093D20BE}
{836C55AD-3691-4DEE-B5F2-861DF6D5AF25}
{F644F81D-8B7C-4FDE-8D73-312B5D29C309}
{05095D7E-4BA8-405F-A751-5C5C18BF5045}
{46940596-913B-44D2-993E-B0FAF1604D80}
{DA2DE1BD-699F-4CBF-8A64-DB4D7F798552}
{EA9C480D-BB9D-4F8F-9C7D-41034633568D}
{CC7BA5A7-4C90-4BC5-A70E-054A97044B8B}
{2A90120B-D0F1-408B-B942-0DF4EB2C4365}
{F1E72C51-ACCD-49F9-AAEF-DF48CC55306B}
{EE16E3B0-EE1A-480F-B505-6488F87A853D}
{6DF36DAF-2C50-42D0-AED4-4EE309D0406D}
{96CA4907-F1AD-4E04-A2DD-5434A8A02156}
{CCF2E6E4-FCD3-426C-B1CE-F3233ABB7CE2}
{0D3463D2-8430-4944-A358-D41C9B16E582}
{2DF0FD6E-171B-4AEA-83E8-4469F024DCE1}
{195CA5B4-88C0-4C88-B8C0-033E90F54345}
{8F5F8B07-50AC-401F-A441-A37740851A5C}
{A6CA147F-8403-46CD-AA53-CF0DF8316279}
{939CD799-59D9-41BE-9EA5-D706CB3B0938}
{F9F09C09-3B26-4331-BFC5-CD7714A79A71}
{708F0301-325F-48CA-B6C3-E20B7AFD2434}
{445FCD6D-6D9B-4CA5-AC42-518FEB37ADA9}
{2C42ED1E-6315-4E63-89E6-057EA114EBB8}
{76E4A642-BC3E-438A-8450-0C15A36B5B18}
{7764814E-AB73-44A2-9AD5-4DBAFAFA8ED8}
{E93264D7-1A50-4A8D-ABBE-7A9B7972E545}
{7B41B227-E480-442F-AB97-1B75739D5B43}
{D989BCC0-757C-4FB6-893C-512DF4382656} = 9.200.44376
Gourami Unica - Utility to uninstall all prior versions of Citrix ICA Clients - http://www.gourami.eu/products/unica