This is a follow up post to last week Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5. There’s indeed many smart people out there so today I wanted to share a similar script created by a friend of mine Microsoft PowerShell MVP Jan Egil Ring. This blog post is just a summary of his awesome work so please visit the original blog post and give Jan Egil some creds in the comments on his blog.

As I described in the last post the easiest way to install printer drivers is to manually or automatically connect to your print server(s) to install the drivers. This is normally not a problem in small environments with only 1 print server and <50 printer objects, but can definitely create some headaches in enterprise environments.

Example: A print server has 500 shared printer objects, while there is only 10 unique printer drivers. It would make more sense to add a printer connection (in order to install the driver) to 10 printer objects rather than 500, given the time consumed by installing a printer connection. Jan Egil

For all great automatic solutions there’s always some pros and cons. The biggest con in my opinion is that you could possibly risk to install malfunction printer drivers that could halt your print services for good or at least for some time during production hours.

One workaround could be to run this script only on your Citrix Data Collector / Print Driver Golden Image server and then using the $ExcludedDriverList parameter to add the printers to the Auto-Replication-List. Take a look at the comment from Frank Peter Schultze on the Replicating Print Drivers in Citrix XenApp 6.5 blog post for more details.

Resource :

• Adding printer drivers from a print server using Windows PowerShell

Back in July I had an interview with Pierre Marmignon about his next project Virtual User Environment Manager (VUEM). Finally I’ve been able to install and take a look at the early Alpha version of the new tool. And I must say it looks really nice.

To test this I spun up a Rackspace Cloud Virtual Machine from my iPad with Windows 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 Express. The Database Creation Wizard that Pierre have developed was straight forward and easy to understand. The power of hosting this standalone machine in the Cloud was that he could log on with RDP at any time without me worrying about domain security, firewall, RSA token and so on.

Virtual User Environment Manager has been designed to provide a first level environment management (e.g., shortcuts creation, network drives mapping, network printers, registry stuff). Some of these settings can of course be managed from Group Policy Preferences, but the power of this tool is Simplicity.

One super cool feature I’m really looking forward to is the ability to disconnect a session as soon as the log off is detected to make the log off look faster. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to test this feature because the VUEM Agent is still in development. The agent will run as a Windows Service, but the .exe can also be launched via a logon script.

Pierre is putting a tremendous amount of time and effort into his tools and he’s also crazy enough to give them all away for free. I highly encourage you to make a donation if you’re using his tools just like me.

Resources :

• CitrixTools.net
• Gettings Started with RackSpace

This is a follow up post for Why Internet Explorer will kill your memory – Part I that I published in March this year. A lot of people have been requesting this and I’m sorry for keeping you waiting so long. I think the reason why this post have been delayed is that I’ve been putting to much into it. I wanted it to cover everything; Internet Explorer 8 tuning, Citrix HDX MediaStream for Flash and so on. Well I just figured out let’s take the IE8 tuning in Part II and then the rest of the stuff can come in some other series.

The setting I’m about to reveal for you will save you a big chunk of memory and money, in both XenApp and XenDesktop environments. By default,  IE8 will start with two instances of iexplore.exe (one for the Frame, one for the tab) and grows the number of tab processes as needed based on the amount of available RAM, the number of tabs, the integrity levels for tabs, and the number of distinct IE sessions. Let’s take a look at some examples :

1 tab – msn.com

2 tabs – msn.com | facebook.com/xenappblog

3 tabs – msn.com | facebook.com/xenappblog | twitter.com/xenappblog

In total memory per user this would be in the correct order : 71mb / 111mb / 154mb

So with only one simple registry setting we can limit Internet Explorer to only run one instance of iexplore.exe for the frame and one for the tabs. This is a REG_DWORD key located under HKCU. For full details check out this MSDN blog post : Opening a New Tab may launch a New Process with Internet Explorer 8.0.

The numbers speak for themselves : 52mb / 62mb / 80mb. I encourage you to check it out right away, and yes it would also work on you personal computer with IE8.

Some other things to keep in mind in terms of Internet Explorer 8 :

• Add-ons add load times every time you open a new browser window or tab
• Keep restriced or trusted site zone list to a minimum
• Keep add-ons and plug-ins up to date. e.g older versions of Adobe Flash may result in browser crashes or hang

Do you remember the old days when we used the hide drives.adm template to hide specified drives along with some kind of hide drives calculator to get the proper value ? So if we wanted to hide drives for Domain Users but not the Domain Admins, we had to create another policy to lock it up again. Those days are long gone thanks to Group Policy Preferences, for me it’s the life before and after. Get rid of all your adm templates and 30+ page vbs logon scripts once for all. This will speed up the logon time and make your administration much easier.

To leverage Group Policy Preferences (GPP) you’ll need to administrate Group Policy’s from a Windows 2008 server (just member server) or Windows 7 with RSAT. On Windows XP and Windows 2003 machines you’ll need Group Policy Preference Client Side Extensions to properly read GPP settings.

Map network drives :

Open Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) and create a new policy. Browse to User Configuration – Preferences – Windows Settings – Drive Maps

In this example we map K: to the Accounting folder for all users member of the Accounting group. It’s possible to create many rules, if member of group A or B or and so on.

Hide Drives :

In this example we hide C: for all users except for Domain Admins. When you start playing around we GPP you’ll learn how really powerful it is. I highly recommend you start following Group Policy Center for weekly tips.

So here’s what I want you to do now :

1. I hope you dig it – and that you’ll love it so much that you’ll share it with others
2. You should become a Fan of my FaceBook page here

I have posted a new Tuning Policy for Citrix XenApp 6 available in the Download section of this blog. Most of the registry keys have been imported from the previous Terminal Server & XenApp Tuning Tips Group Policy v1.1. There are some Group Policy Best Practices templates around, but the power of mine are that they are ready to go. There are no extra configuration required.

Remember that UPHClean is natively embedded into Windows 2008 and later and it’s recommended to Disable Data Execution Prevention on Windows 2008. This can be done with this command : bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff

Change log :

• Moved keys from HKLMSoftware to HKLMSOFTWAREWow6432Node
• Added more StubPath’s to speed up the profile creation for new users
• Added instructions on How To Import the settings in GPMC within the zip file
• Deleted “WFDontAppendUserNameToProfile“
• Deleted “NoRemoteChangeNotify“

Resources :

• CitrixTools.net – Terminal Server & XenApp Tuning Tips

Note :

Please note that these policy’s are provided “as is” and that using these is at your own risk. Please feel free to leave comments below regarding bugs & suggested improvements in future releases.

Microsoft recently released a free Remote Desktop Manager called Remote Desktop Connection Manager. I’m not going to cover this application in details here, because Mick Huxley have already posted a great Remote Desktop Manager article on his blog.

I would also highly recommend the article Dynamic Remote Desktop Connection Manager connection list. This is a super cool PowerShell script that make sure your connection list is always up to date.

If you’re like me you’re probably daily using Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection for RDP, but wouldn’t you love to have something similar for Citrix ICA? Well those days are over thanks to tekHelix’s xConnect.

So here’s what I want you to do now :

• In the comments below, please tell me what’s your favorite Remote Desktop Manager
• If this post scratched where it itches, please share it via the retweet button

Once again I’m on my way to Citrix Synergy for the first time in San Francisco. I have been going to Citrix Synergy (Summit) for the last 10 years and 8 of those have been in Orlando. This year’s event have already set a new record in number of Nordic Customer attendees. A little big strange since we now get Citrix Synergy in Berlin in October.

Anyway, to stay up to date on what’s going on please follow XenAppBlog on Facebook.

You could also use Twitter and search for #CitrixSynergy. The opening keynotes are  Wednesday 10:30 – 12:30 and Thursday 08:30 – 10:30    (GMT/UTC – 7:00). Take a look at the full agenda.

Most customers have delayed the upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or 8 as long as possible. The reason is memory / CPU usage especially on Terminal Servers, but this applies to personal computers and VDI as well. Some of the biggest web pages in Norway have been promoting upgrades similar to YouTube and Twitter and now the Norwegian Center for Information Protection strongly recommend to upgrade. So Internet Explorer 6 is approaching its end of life and it’s time to move on.

A lot of projects these days are focusing on server consolidation leveraging virtualization to get more users on each hosts. Planning and Proof Of Concept is the essential to success. Don’t believe everything you hear about increasing user density / server by four times, avoiding purchase of additional hardware.

Okay, if you move your 3-5 year old Citrix environment to a hypervisor and stick to Citrix Presentation Server 4, Office 2000/2003 and Internet Explorer 6, maybe you will make it. What normally happens when you do projects like this, you upgrade to Citrix XenApp 5.0, Office 2007 SP2 and Internet Explorer 7 or 8 as well.

In this first post I will show you what happens with your memory usage when you upgrade Internet Explorer (IE). I have tested all the different versions of IE on 13 different web pages. The tests have been run on Windows 2003 SP2 and every IE version have been patched with the latest updates. IE have been open and closed after 1 minute and the memory usage have been recorded. The latest version of Adobe Flash / Shockwave and Sun Java have been installed with the Core Applications FrameWork.

Memory Usage :

Increase in Percentage :

Excel Spreadsheet :

From these numbers you can easily see that upgrading only Internet Explorer will have a huge impact on the maximum users per Terminal Server. In the next article in this blog series I will show you what you can do to reduce the memory usage with registry tuning and Citrix HDX Mediastream for Flash.

PS : Remember to Subscribe to RSS and connect to XenAppBlog on Facebook so you do not miss out on important news.

I have been working on many Citrix / SAP implementation, but never printing via Citrix Universal Printer (CUP). If you use SAPLPD because your environment is not at the necessary patch level to use the recommended control printing the printer name has a limitation of 40 characters.

This becomes a problem with CUP because it creates a printer name like Citrix Universal Printer (from WI_YHQGGnzQQOp_7q5Hu) in session 3. It’s possible to modify default.ica to get the client name instead of the Web Interface generated unique name, but it will still be to long Citrix Universal Printer (from PC001) in session 3. So after some research on the web I stumbled upon a blog post from CitrixTools.net.

Create a CTXRename.vbs in your SAPGUI catalog. The default value “Const PrntNameSize = 8” will create a printer name like Citrix_U_%username%. I have change the value to “Const PrntNameSize = 24” to get a printer name like Citrix_Universal_Printer_%username% which is almost identical to what the users normally sees. To let the users run the scripts the easiest way is to add Domain Users to the local Power Users Group.

For further information on Best Practices for SAPGUI 7.10 on CPS check out CTX116576.

The Technology Preview of Citrix XenApp for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 is now available for download.

New features :

• More users, faster logons – Get up to 20% more users per server with XenApp on the R2 platform and faster logons with new Profile management streaming technology that improves user profile load times by up to 80%.
• Seamless management integration – Role-based installation wizards, a new unified application management console, management through Active Directory group policies and support for PowerShell 2.0 help you deploy, configure and automate XenApp faster and easier than ever before.
• More apps in HDX – HDX RealTime now delivers high quality audio using up to 90% less bandwidth and enables video conferencing using Microsoft Office Communicator or teleconferencing using VoIP softphones. New HDX Plug-n-Play support for Windows portable USB devices lets users connect more of the devices they need to the applications they use including point-of-sale, webcams, scanners, digital cameras and more.
• Self-service application delivery – Citrix Dazzle, the first self-service “storefront” for the enterprise, gives corporate employees 24×7 access to the applications they need to work. Citrix Streaming technology with Windows service isolation and Microsoft App-V integration provide new options for delivering more applications to your users.
• Complete mobility – New plug-ins as well as updated Receivers for Windows, iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile keep business moving by enabling complete mobility and freedom to access enterprise applications from anywhere.