By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, November 28, 2007 1:48:11 PM

For those who are using Citrix Installation Manager as a deployment strategy for MSI packages and hotfixes, etc. you should be aware that if you deploy HRP01 for PS4.5 and then attempt to deploy MSI packages that include transforms (MST files) the installation via IM will fail.  Citrix has a private hotfix named PSE450R01W2K3021.msp that resolves this issue.  However, there's still a number of issues which are:

1) The fact that this is still a private hotfix and it came out in August 2007.  Come on Citrix, where's the final public hotfix for this thing already?

2) The fact that it's private and most people don't know that it exists.

3) The fact that it seems to be invalidated by newer hotfixes.  I've done test deployments of hotfix numbers greater than 21, and it seems from my testing that if you don't deploy limited release hotfix 21 at the very end of your Citrix hotfixes, then you lose the ability to deploy further MSIs that include transforms.  So I've been putting limited release hotfix...

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By Shawn Bass on Monday, November 26, 2007 10:16:28 AM

While this whitepaper is coming from a vendor and is partial to their profile management solution, it's still a very nice review of the Windows Profile Management headaches and provides info on how the sepagoProfile solution resolves this issues.  It's definitely a nice read.

By Shawn Bass on Monday, November 19, 2007 3:51:18 PM

Brian Madden has recommitted himself to completing the upcoming CPS 4.5 book.  Brian is approaching this book in a slightly different approach than previous books.  In the new CPS 4.5 book, Brian will be writing chapters and releasing them online immediately in a brand new content management system built by Brian's web developers.  This will allow for immediate release of new information, as well as corrections and community feedback.  To this end, Brian has released Chapter 3: Network architecture.

By Shawn Bass on Sunday, November 18, 2007 7:12:34 AM

A client of mine is just putting in Secure Gateway 3.0 with WI4.6 (and PNA).  I noticed that they didn't have Session Reliability enabled and I was going to set it up for them.  I noticed that they didn't have any hotfixes for Secure Gateway 3.0 (which is a no-no since you'll have problems connecting in with newer ICA Clients 9.2+ when using Session Reliability).  Citrix fixed the issue with the hotfix SGE300W003 (CTX110661), but that hotfix was later superceded by SGE300W008 - CTX114059.  So you go off and download CTX114059 and attempt to apply it to your Secure Gateway 3.0 setup.  During the installation the hotfix stops and tries to restart the Secure Gateway service.  However, you receive an Error 1920 from Windows Installer stating that it's unable to start the Secure Gateway Service.  The reason for this error is that the Secure Gateway hotfix is dependent upon a Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime...

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By Shawn Bass on Saturday, November 03, 2007 3:34:03 PM

Ruben Spruijt from PQR posted a blog entry over at BrianMadden mentioning that Citrix support has released a video of their CSEIT session that covers troubleshooting tools for CPS environments.  I attended this session myself and it's a overall good session, though much of the tools covered are things I'm already using.  Still, a great review of the available tools.  Ruben is kindly hosting the video/PPT download on his site here.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:48:56 PM

I love the Idokorro Rove Mobile Citrix ICA Client for Blackberry.  Rove Mobile recently announced the release of version 2.0 of the Mobile Citrix client that adds support for Secure Gateway connections and an improved web interface.  Read the press release here.  View the FAQ here.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 1:08:03 PM

On a blog entry at CitrixCommunity Derek Thorslund has posted a link to a video clip showing some pretty advanced graphics acceleration that Citrix is working on for remoting things like Vista Aero to remote systems over ICA.  It's a pretty impressive video.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 12:25:50 PM

Michael Burke has put up part 4 of 4 of his Troubleshooting TS Licensing on MSTerminalServices.org.  This article deals with the following items:

• An in-depth look at the MSLicensing registry key
• Using the TSCTST resource kit utility for decoding client CALs
• Popular event IDs and corrupt CAL issues
• Transferring CALs from one client to another
• Some notes on thin-client devices

Read the full article here.

By Shawn Bass on Wednesday, September 26, 2007 7:12:49 AM

Michael Burke has posted part 3 of 4 in his series on troubleshooting Terminal Server licensing.  This entire series is a great read and reference to hang on to.

This topic is on:

• Corrupt license databases
• Activation issues
• Problems adding CALs

Read the full article here.

By Shawn Bass on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 9:59:49 AM

Since server hangs is an often reported issue on Terminal Server environments due to high resource depletion, I thought it would be best to post this blog entry under the SBC blog even though it largely applies to all Windows Server environments.  The Windows Server Performance Team blogged about methods to troubleshoot server hangs today and it boils down to these steps:Is this a hard or soft hang?  If this is a hard hang, then the odds are that there is an underlying hardware issue, so contact your hardware vendor. Check the Event logs for any events in the System Log at the time of the hang.  In the case of Pool Depletion, you will see Event ID's 2019 or 2020 with the Event Source being SRV Launch Performance Monitor and check the starting value for Free System PTE's under the Memory object.  If a system is booting up with fewer Free System PTE's than is normal (around 15,000 or fewer), then that is not a good sign.  That means that...

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