Urgent: Citrix Session "Freeze"
Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 12:54 pm
I recently purchased PDF X-Change Pro 250 users for my Citrix XenApp 4.5 farm and am experiencing a serious issue that is greatly affecting productivity that must be resolved ASAP. We use a published desktop where the application suite has been installed (Viewer, Tools, Office Add-in, etc).
Users have been reporting session "freezes" which cause all running applications within the published desktop to become unusable. The shell/explorer becomes unresponsive and, therefore, they are unable to log off the system to exit the session. Administratively terminating all processes in use does not recover the session (must be done by an administrator logged into the console of the server where the user is logged into the published desktop as the user cannot access the task manager or anything else for that matter). The only method of ending the session is by logging it off using the Citrix Access Management Console. There are 70 users which access the farm but only 15% experience the issue, however, each day we have reports of additional users that do.
The issue seems to occur intermittently and can occur to the same user several times per day. Obviously this becomes very disruptive to both the user and our IT support as only a support personnel can log the user off so that they can log back in and continue working (a new session).
Until today, I was unable to reproduce this issue. It only happens when using programs in the Office 2007 Standard suite, or the PDF XChange Viewer. It often occurs when a user attempts to attach a file (not necessarily a PDF) to an email in Outlook. The process I've been able to reproduce the problem is as follows:
Open a PDF with the viewer via windows explorer.
Right-click the minimised explorer window on the taskbar, the session immediately locks up.
The viewer is still responsive, however, all applications and the shell/session outside the viewer become completely unresponsive. I suspect the users who experience random crashes while using the office suite may be related to the PDF Xchange office plugins.
Some notes on my environment:
Citrix XenApp 4.5 R02, 4 servers in farm, issue occurs on all servers.
Windows Server 2003 32 bit.
Published desktop.
Mix of thin client and desktops.
Issue started immediately after installing PDF XChange Pro 4.0 (latest release 4.0180, installed using the 32 bit MSI installer in Terminal Services installation mode).
Your immediate attention to this issue is greatly appreciated.
Users have been reporting session "freezes" which cause all running applications within the published desktop to become unusable. The shell/explorer becomes unresponsive and, therefore, they are unable to log off the system to exit the session. Administratively terminating all processes in use does not recover the session (must be done by an administrator logged into the console of the server where the user is logged into the published desktop as the user cannot access the task manager or anything else for that matter). The only method of ending the session is by logging it off using the Citrix Access Management Console. There are 70 users which access the farm but only 15% experience the issue, however, each day we have reports of additional users that do.
The issue seems to occur intermittently and can occur to the same user several times per day. Obviously this becomes very disruptive to both the user and our IT support as only a support personnel can log the user off so that they can log back in and continue working (a new session).
Until today, I was unable to reproduce this issue. It only happens when using programs in the Office 2007 Standard suite, or the PDF XChange Viewer. It often occurs when a user attempts to attach a file (not necessarily a PDF) to an email in Outlook. The process I've been able to reproduce the problem is as follows:
Open a PDF with the viewer via windows explorer.
Right-click the minimised explorer window on the taskbar, the session immediately locks up.
The viewer is still responsive, however, all applications and the shell/session outside the viewer become completely unresponsive. I suspect the users who experience random crashes while using the office suite may be related to the PDF Xchange office plugins.
Some notes on my environment:
Citrix XenApp 4.5 R02, 4 servers in farm, issue occurs on all servers.
Windows Server 2003 32 bit.
Published desktop.
Mix of thin client and desktops.
Issue started immediately after installing PDF XChange Pro 4.0 (latest release 4.0180, installed using the 32 bit MSI installer in Terminal Services installation mode).
Your immediate attention to this issue is greatly appreciated.