Tag Archives: citrix

Citrix Receiver Per-User Install Cleanup

For years Citrix has created the Receiver installer with per-user installation functionality where if the installer is launched in the context of a regular user it will install/register the components to the local user’s profile rather than just failing with a permission error. This creates a huge headache when trying to mass deploy Receiver (now Citrix Workspace) to the environment. You wind up with machines that have both installed. When this happens the user that had the per-user installation cannot launch applications. Even worse the machine/profile usually winds up being in a state where the per-user installation cannot be removed. Even if you get it removed the uninstaller and Citrix’s own cleanup utilities do an awful job at cleaning up the registered classes/components in the per-user installation. Their tools only clean up a fraction of what is actually there. My last two work environments (and current) have been plagued with these installations. I spent time a while back figuring out how to clean it up manually, but it is a major headache to do so. I tried logging a case (and an enhancement request) with Citrix about two years ago stating their Receiver Clean-up Utility utility does not properly clean up these installations. They later came back saying they no longer are supporting the utility. It seems that since then they’ve updated the utility to clean installs up to version 4.3.

Let’s take a look what Citrix is missing in their utility… To do this I take a clean profile, install Citrix Receiver 4.3.100 (not elevated/per-user install), and uninstall it using the Receiver Clean-up Utility (running as an administrator/elevated) while the regular user is still logged in and has their profile loaded. Here is a high-level list of what was left behind in the registry:

  • HKCU\Software\Classes\* – File Associations and COM object registrations
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\AppID\* – AppID registrations
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\Applications\* – More app registrations
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID\* – MANY COM class object GUIDs
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\WOW6432Node\CLSID\* – MANY COM class object GUIDs (32-bit)
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\Interface\* – MANY interface name to interface ID mappings
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\WOW6432Node\Interface\* – MANY interface name to interface ID mappings (32-bit)
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\MIME\Database\Content Type\* – x-ica MIME types
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\PROTOCOLS\Filter\* – Protocol filter handlers
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\Record\*
  • HKCU\Software\Classes\TypeLib\*
  • HKCU\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins\* – Firefox plugin registrations
  • HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Installer\Products – MSI installer product codes

In addition to this there are other issues:

  • When it is run against a machine it doesn’t properly load other existing (unloaded) profiles. This caused it not to fully process other user profiles on the machine
  • It doesn’t always kill processes correctly leaving file/directories behind

I decided to build a wrapper script around the Citrix Receiver Clean-up Utility to fill in the gaps. To do so I had to create a full list of everything I had to target. I decided to extract the MSIs from the installer I was testing with and dissect them. I used SuperOrca to pull the ‘Registry’ table from each MSI. I imported those into Excel and used filtering/VLOOKUPs to extract what I needed.

After chopping up the data I am left with the following groups of items to target:

  • A static list of unique registry keys under the user’s profile (this is a good start, but I noticed that some of the IDs in CLSID and Interface are different between versions)
  • A list of values to search for under ‘HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID’ in order to determine of the root key should be deleted. Also need to target the WOW6432Node path
  • A list of values to search for under ‘HKCU\Software\Classes\Interface’ in order to determine of the root key should be deleted. Also need to target the WOW6432Node path
  • A list of values to search for under ‘HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Installer\Products’ in order to determine of the root key should be deleted. The clean-up utility cleaned up most of this, but one was left over for me

Now that I have the targets it’s time to write the script. In addition to targeting the various registry locations I want to:

  • Identify and load all profile registry hives. This will allow me to run my clean-up process against all profiles, but it will also allow the clean-up utility to process them without the having to be logged in
  • Kill processes that reside in certain paths using wildcards
  • Execute the Citrix Receiver Clean-up Utility silently
  • Clean up a static list of registry keys in all user profiles
  • Search for a list of value strings under in the ‘CLSID’ keys and delete the parent key if a match is found
  • Search for a list of value strings under in the ‘Interface’ keys and delete the parent key if a match is found
  • Search for a list of ‘ProductName‘ value strings under in the ‘Installer\Products’ keys and delete the product key if a match is found
  • Unload all registry hives that were manually loaded in the first step
  • I also wanted the script to work with older versions of PowerShell. I did my best to make it compatible with PS V2

I have tested the script with multiple versions and so far it is working well. It does require that you download the Receiver Clean-up Utility and place the executable in the same directory as the script. Feel free to submit any issues here or in the GitHub repository.

GitHub link: https://github.com/markdepalma/CleanPerUserReceiverInstall

Applying group policy preferences based on Citrix delivery group or machine catalog membership

We’ve slowly been transitioning our Citrix XenApp environment from static VMs to Machine Creation Services (MCS) based VMs. My goal was to have two master (fat) images and two machine catalogs. Because of policy and application segregation requirements those two catalogs translated into more than two delivery groups. With these delivery groups came the requirement to apply different group policies to different machines. One option would be to move the corresponding AD object into a different OU and apply policy that way. While that would work due to AD objects not being automatically moved/re-created after machine creation it still requires some administrative overhead. It was clear that dynamically adjusting certain policies based on delivery group membership would be ideal.

After a little digging I found where both the delivery group and machine catalog memberships were written to in the registry by the VDA. Below is an example of how we applied a user GPP item dynamically based on the delivery group of the machine.

Registry Key Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\State
Delivery Group Value Name: DesktopGroupName
Machine Catalog Value Name: DesktopCatalogName

A NIC device is tied to a disallowed network

I recently received a call from a former colleague where they were unable to update a machine catalog. They stated nothing had changed in vCenter, Citrix, or the master image. The error they were receiving was:

Error Id: XDDS:919D761E

Exception: Citrix.Console.Models.Exceptions.ProvisioningTaskException Create Catalog failed with an unknown reason, see terminating error for more details. at Citrix.Console.PowerShellSdk.ProvisioningSchemeService.BackgroundTasks.ProvisioningSchemeTask.CheckForTerminatingError(SdkProvisioningSchemeAction sdkProvisioningSchemeAction) at Citrix.Console.PowerShellSdk.ProvisioningSchemeService.BackgroundTasks.ProvisioningSchemeTask.WaitForProvisioningSchemeActionCompletion(Guid taskId, Action`1 actionResultsObtained) at Citrix.Console.PowerShellSdk.ProvisioningSchemeService.BackgroundTasks.ProvisioningSchemeCreationTask.StartProvisioningAction() at Citrix.Console.PowerShellSdk.ProvisioningSchemeService.BackgroundTasks.ProvisioningSchemeCreationTask.RunTask() at Citrix.Console.PowerShellSdk.BackgroundTaskService.BackgroundTask.Task.Run()


DesktopStudio_ErrorId : ProvisioningTaskError
ErrorCategory : NotSpecified
ErrorID : NetworkNotPermitted
TaskErrorInformation : Terminated
InternalErrorMessage : A NIC device is tied to a disallowed network.
DesktopStudio_PowerShellHistory : Create Machine Catalog 'XenApp - WSRV12 - DAPPS - DR'
11/25/2018 7:09:42 AM

The key error here is ‘A NIC device is tied to a disallowed network’. If you do a quick search you will find an article referencing this error: CTX139460. This points to a change in the vCenter networking config, but supposedly there weren’t any changes. Time to do some digging. I asked them to get networking info from both vCenter and CItrix using PowerShell.

To get the hypervisor networking I asked him to log in to one of the delivery controllers, launch PowerShell as administrator, and run the following:

Add-PSSnapin Citrix*
dir XDHyp:\HostingUnits | Select PSPath,HostingUnit*,*Network* | Format-List

The output of this was:

PSPath : Citrix.Host.Admin.V1\Citrix.Hypervisor::XDHyp:\HostingUnits\DR_Cluster-vm_dr
HostingUnitName : DR_Cluster-vm_dr
HostingUnitUid : bddd641a-a55c-4f0e-bd62-9331502fd908
NetworkId : Network:network-641
NetworkPath : XDHyp:\Connections\PRDVCENTER01\DR.datacenter\DR Cluster.cluster\VM Network 201.network
...

The thing to take note of is the ‘NetworkId‘ for the DR hosting connection. This Id is the vCenter MoRef (Managed Object Reference) for the VM network. I then had him pull the VM networks from vCenter using PowerCLI.

To get the VM networks (with MoRef) from vCenter I asked him to launch VMware PowerCLI as administrator and run the following:

Connect-VIServer prdvcenter01.domain.com
Get-View -ViewType Network | Select Name,MoRef

The output of this was:

Name                                                        MoRef
---- -----
VM Network 201 Network-network-4790

...

The MoRef was network-641 in MCS, but network-4790 in vCenter even though the VM network names were the same. From this it was clear there was a networking change performed on the vCenter side at some point. After stating this, it was revealed that port groups were deleted and recreated (which generated new MoRef ids) in this DR cluster. At this point we have to reconfigure the hosting connection networking with the new MoRef and this cannot be done in Citrix Studio. To do this we have to reconfigure the ‘NetworkPath‘ in the hosting connection, but use the same ‘NetworkPath‘ since the network name did not change. Running this will force the network MoRef to be queried and updated in the MCS hosting connection.

To reset (or change if needed) the ‘NetworkPath‘ in the hosting connection you take the ‘PSPath‘ from the first command and copy everything starting with ‘XDHyp‘. I took that path and provided them with this command to run:

Set-Item –Path ‘XDHyp:\HostingUnits\DR_Cluster-vm_dr’ –NetworkPath ‘XDHyp:\Connections\PRDVCENTER01\DR.datacenter\DR Cluster.cluster\VM Network 201.network’

Finally, I asked them to re-run the first ‘dir‘ command again to verify the network MoRef updated. After doing this they were able to successfully update the machine catalog.