If you are having issues with some users having freeze issues and high response time in Citrix Director, this registry key might help you. It happens in conjunction with dedicated GPUs on notebooks. The key disabled GPU acceleration for Citrix Workspace App.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Citrix\ICA Client\Graphics Engine] “HWacceleration”=dword:00000000

References:

https://support.citrix.com/s/article/CTX297140-screen-freezes-and-takes-a-few-seconds-to-return-to-normal-apps-also-flicker-when-open?language=en_US

As a normal user without admin rights, you can theoretically kill the Windows Guest OS (for example if you are connected through Citrix or Remote Desktop Services) by safely removing the VMXNET3 adapter on the bottom right. This is very bad and is apparently “by design”.

To hide the icon proceed as folow:

With the VM powered off, click Edit Settings > Options > General and configuration parameters. Add row and then type devices.hotplug. As a value insert FALSE. You can then power on your machine.

References:

https://communities.vmware.com/t5/ESXi-Discussions/Remove-quot-Safely-Remove-Hardware-quot-icon-in-a-Windows-guest/td-p/2495345

Updating VMware Tools on a Citrix Provisioning Master Image used to be very time consuming. Nowadays it has gotten a little better, but you still have to do a few extra steps because of the vmxnet3 network adapter. Here are the steps that I took when upgrading to the newest Vmware Tools that came with ESXi 8.0 update.

• Start the Master VM
• Once booted up, add a new E1000E network card
• Check in device manager if the E1000E/Intel network card can be seen
• Shutdown VM
• In the Provisioning console, change the mac address of the target device to that of the E1000E network card
• Disconnect vmxnet3 NIC (uncheck connect on power on)
• Start Master VM. Beware that the E1000E NIC is emulated and is painfully slow. I had instances where it took 15 minutes to boot up!
• Once booted up, start VMware Tools upgrade through Vcenter (interactive)
• Visual C++ Redistributable might be installed, you might need to reboot
• Let boot
• Start Vmware Tools upgrade again (interactive)
• Run the installer
• Shutdown VM
• Disconnect E1000E NIC (uncheck connect on power on)
• Connect vmxnet3 NIC (check connect on power on)
• Boot
• Once booted, fully remove E1000E fully
• In device manager, show hidden devices and delete the greyed out Intel NIC

This time there are no references. I had to try and error myself.

Windows Server 2022 is new and has to be the best Windows Server there is right? Not at all. Microsoft has added a recovery partition (like in Windows Client versions) that prohibits you from expanding the boot disk like you usually would in older Windows Server versions.

Anyway, here are a few diskpart commands that will help you delete the recovery partition and allow you to expand the boot disk:

diskpart

list disk

select disk 0

Make sure partition 4 is the 523MB Recovery partition

select partition 4

delete partition override

References:

https://www.diskpart.com/diskpart/delete-partition-4125.html

When trying to install the Teams system-wide on an RDS, you might get this error stating that no VDI environment was detected:

msiexec /i “Teams_windows_x64.msi” ALLUSER=1

This is because the installer checks if these registry entries are present on the system (Citrix or VMware):

HKLM\Software\Citrix\PortICA DWORD ALLUSER 1

So the solution is easy: just manually add the Citrix key you are good to go. Teams should work just fine on a RDS that is not provisioned by Citrix or VMware Horizon (why shouldn’t it?).

References:

https://www.masterpackager.com/blog/mst-to-install-microsoft-teams-msi-vdi-to-regular-windows-10