Working on a tool I had to face the specific case of writing large integers into a REG_DWORD value.

The problem is that basically you cannot write anything superior to the Integer.MaxValue() object in a DWORD value using the .Net Managed APIs Registry.SetValue(), which can be problematic (in my case that was for XenApp DefaultPRNFlags and I really need to be able to write these settings down).

To overcome this issue ...

Following my First Blog Post regarding this subject we've been able to work on this issue with both Microsoft and Citrix support.

To find an alternative to the workaround mentionned in the first article, we did some tests and found that the issue could be stopped by disabling ...

I've not had any free time to blog this week and I only wrote about it on my Twitter Account.

Citrix has extended the Citrix Professionnal Award (CTP) this week to include new members.

I'm really honored as I'm one of these new members, joining a Community of really valuable professionals.

CitrixTools.Net WebSite and Tools are really taking me lots of time and that's awesome to get such an award in return, because I have to admit that ...

I've worked this week on a critical production issue involving Provisioning Services 5.1.

The symptoms were the following :

• explorer.exe freezing randomly for some seconds (8 to 30)
• Logons stalling randomly for 8 to 30 seconds
• Microsoft Office Applications (Word, Excel, Powerpoint ...) Freezing randomly when doing File / Open or File Save for 8 to 30 second
• Start Menu freezing for 8 to 30 seconds
• ...

Actually, anything that can use the SMB Network stack was randomly freezing on Provisioned devices.

During our tests, we've confirmed that the Master Target (the device used to create the vDisk) was not impacted at all, and that we were able to reproduce only on provisioned target devices.

We've been able to reproduce the issue and found that even if the symptom was an application freezing, the issue was impacting all XenApp / Terminal Server sessions on the Target Device at the same time.

The case is now escalated and hopefully we should get an hotfix for it (and I'll update this post as soon as we've validated it).

Fortunately we have been able to find a workaround and as this case is critical for users I'm sharing it (to be honest we just found it )

To explain the problem and the workaround, I'll describe the Architecture we're using to understand the context and see if the workaround could be applied in your implementation ...

When running a XenApp environment, there is a huge need of getting all sensible datas saved.

Even if you're running a regular DataStore backup, you can't sometimes deal with it when it comes that the database is corrupted.

Why ? Because it is often hard to know when it was corrupted, so you could waste a lot of time in looking for the specific not corrupted backup, specific backup that may not contains an updated configuration.

Scripting all Farm / Servers settings is quite easy but every application publication / policy creation is not.

To deal with this problem, I'm implementing on my customers site a daily Published Applications / Policies export with XenApp Application Export Manager and XenApp Policies Export Manager ...

CitrixTools.Net has celebrated (silently) its first birthday on June 2009.

After one year online I wanted to use this new "Blog" area to write something about this website creation and its first online year.

Behind the site, there are some tools I've developped, so we can say the story began with tools.

I'm working with Citrix technologies since 2001 and as all of You I've started writing my own scripts / reg files to ease my deployments.

Actually I've never been ...

I'm currently working for a customer on automating Citrix Provisioning Server through Powershell Scripts.

For those who have had a look on how to automate PVS, there are three ways on how to achieve it :

• The provided Mcli.exe command line tool
• The PowerShell SnapIn
• The PVS SOAP API

The PowerShell SnapIn was more suited to my needs then I've started writing some scripts to achieve typical configuration and Admin tasks.

The first scripts I'll publish are dedicated to Add / Rename / Delete a Device.

As PowerShell does not support spaces within Command Line Arguments, the only limitation is not to add spaces for item names.

Please also remember that PVS Devices Name should be limited to 15 cars.

As RIM just released the Blackberry App World v1.1 and with this release allows French people to use it I decided to get it up and running on my BB Bold.

I have to say that it was not easy ! (Maybe it's me, maybe it's because my BB is in French, I don't know)

The first thing I've tried is to go the the RIM Website (http://www.blackberry.com) and navigate to the AppWorld section.

From this page I could send an email to my device with the download link. That's what I've done.

The problem was that when connecting to the link provided in the email the portal was saying that my device does not meet the requirements for App World (sic)

I've then tried to install it through my computer ...

As a Blackberry 9000 Bold user, I've been testing some Twitter Software.

The one that I've liked the most is TweetGenius.



This software is not available now because it is being rewritten but i'll soon be available again for Blackberry users.

Its only downside is that it is not free (althought not really expensive).

Unlike some other Twitter programs (like UberTwitter for example), TweetGenius is relying on a cache, which is really cool actually because it speeds up the launch and Tweets navigation but which could lead to problems when for example you decide to follow new people or you want the avatars to reflect some modified one.

That's why there is an hidden feature in the software to allow users to clear this cache and rebuild a brand new tweets / avatars list.

As it is not documented (actually I've found it in a developper Tweet and had to adapt it for my specific case) here is the procedure ...

Welcome to this new Blog Page !

Besides the CitrixTools.Net website I've decided to add the blogs section to be able to share my insights, experiences and thoughts in a more flexible concept.

Actually the WebSite, as it is built today, is really focused on Citrix Technologies, Tools and Articles and I want to keep it like that.

However, I was missing the Blog concept which would have allowed me to write more less tech or less complete articles.

That's Why ..