How we use Classic Shell as a Start Menu replacement in XenApp

Ever since Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 the Windows Start menu is dead to me. I tried a few times to use it, but horrible placement and the slow search function make it unusable. Many people say that this is no longer valid for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, and I agree that it has become a lot better, but i still don’t like it.
Besides my personal feelings, there are so many ridiculous problems with the Windows 10 Start Menu, that I must confess that I never even tried to deploy it enterprise ready. Examples:

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Silent uninstall Office 365

I had to bulk repair a few Office 365 Fat Client Installations. With the Office 365 Click-to-Run deployment EXE and two XML files this is a quick task.

First download the Office 2016 Deployment Tool:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49117

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Basic XenApp HDX 3D Pro Proof of Concept – What I missed

To proof the capability of XenApp to deliver 3D rendered applications, we build a very basic PoC. We took a used Lenovo ThinkCentre Tower PC with an Intel Core i5 and 4GB RAM and bought a used Nvidia Quadro 2000 for it. It is important to use a Quadro card, because this makes the driver installation much easier. We tried other cards in the first place, but it was just way too much work to get drivers for a Windows Server installation to work properly. Continue reading “Basic XenApp HDX 3D Pro Proof of Concept – What I missed”

HowTo: Monitoring if a specific user is logged on with Zabbix

Sometimes you face the problem, that a software vendor depends on logged on user sessions, instead of windows services. We had the case, that a partner constantly complained, that we logged of his service user. To have a history about the logged on state, I added a Zabbix item through the possibility to add custom UserParameter. The CMD line utility qwinsta is able to check if a specific user is logged on.

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Storefront Upgrade from 3.8 to 3.9 still forgets default IIS Site setting

Yesterday I installed the upgrade from Citrix Storefront 3.8 to Storefront 3.9 on our Windows Server 2016 Delivery Controller (XenApp 7.12 -> 7.13). The setup went smooth, except that after the upgrade the default IIS website setting was turned off. Again.. Like the last time I did this..

Storefront 3.9 – Set Default Website

I was told that this bug has been filed and will be fixed. But this hasn’t been the case yet.

Simply turn it back on, I hope next time this will be solved.