Koetzing IT
Thomas Kötzing - Freiberufler, Analyst - MVP, CTP
Blinking Desktop Icons can be very annoying for users. This problem primarily happens, when the User desktop was redirected to a network share. Folder redirection is done quite often in a Remote Desktop- or ICA Desktop session to keep the user profile small. Here the solution for how to stop the blinking!
I had several incidents now with customers and the Citrix universal print server (UPS) that I like to share with you. Many complain that UPS is not working are based on missing information not published by Citrix.
Slow logons are already an issue but when it gets to a certain duration then it causes massive problems when using only publish application. Things can get even worse when Citrix user profile manager automatic configuration has not been disabled. Automatic configuration of UPM enforces profile streaming and it might and can cause further issues when dealing with a lot of small files like ini files, cookies, bookmarks and others.
Microsoft has changed or extended the screen saver capabilities and in addition Citrix has disabled the screen saver and power functionallity by default for all Windows client operating systems. Therefore, you might find yourself unable to activate the screen saver as you have done before.
Using group policy is getting more common instead of long and complicated login scripts. I often eliminate customer's login scripts into group policy and has many advantages. Nevertheless, group policy can slow down login time for different reasons. I recently showed a customer a simple way to troubleshoot login delays caused by group policy.
Citrix XenDesktop Desktop icons are by default the same pictures for all delivery groups and quite boring. Back in the old XenApp days, the icon for Desktops could simply be picked during publishing. With XenDesktop, you have to use PowerShell (welcome to the future!) and with version 7.13 the get-ctxicons (Retrieves icon data from various sources) was removed and makes the process more difficult.
The interactive session is probably the most time spent during logon, according to Citrix Director. What is, actually, the interactive session and how can it be reduced? For many customers and users the logon duration is important and, therefore, you might want to minimize the time. This is nothing new and I have written and talked about the Windows logon a lot in the past because it's an important topic, once you steal the user's PC and replace it with a Thin Client.
