Occasional delay in starting OW-applications on Citrix Metaframe

WRaunecker

Member
Hi list,
We use fat clients, Windows Terminal Servers, Citrix Metaframe 1.8 and Citrix Metaframe XPa (on Win2K Servers). Two months ago we updated to OneWorld XE Update7 and SP21.
From the beginning on we encountered performance problems on the new terminal server farm (Citrix Metaframe XPa on Win2K Servers). Meanwhile the TS-farm performs very good, but occasaionally it takes several minutes to switch from one OW-screen to another - especially when the users have not worked in OneWorld for a few minutes - and sometimes OneWorld even seems to "hang".
After this delay OW performs normally again for a period of time until the next delay occurs (usually when the user is on the phone and needs quick information).

We do not encounter these problems on fat clients or WTS and Metaframe 1.8.

Please help, I appreciate any ideas.
 
WRaunecker,

you are not alone. Back in December we migrated 4 out of 6 Windows Terminal Servers from NT4 Citrix Metaframe 1.8 to Windows 2000 Citrix Metaframe XP. Users on the new farm (W2K Citrix XP) experience random freezes in OneWorld like you are describing. Sometimes, their whole session just hangs. We simply close OneWorld and everything comes back to normal until the next freeze. Users on the old farm (NT Citrix 1.8) and those using Fat Clients do not have this problem. I have been working with Global Support Services on this issue since February. No luck so far. Since then, we upgraded OneWorld from Service Pack 17 to 20 and then to 21, installed all baseline ESUs, sent these guys logs and just recently installed Update 7. None of the solutions prior to Update 7 have worked. We will be testing U7 as of next week. We were told by GSS that Update 7 solved this problem for clients who were experiencing random freezes on W2K Terminal Servers. Judging by your signature, this is not necessarily the case with all clients.

If anybody out there has any ideas on how to solve this issue or suggestions, please feel free to share them with the community,

Thanks,
 
When was the last FULL package built and deployed ?

Specifications can become fragmented, and this contributes to delays in starting the applications. This often depends on the configuration of the machine in question.

I recommend performing a full package build and deployment and create a process that regularly does this.
 
The last full package was built on June, 24th, and deployed immediately. No update packages have been deployed.
 
What Feature Release are you running for Metaframe? We ran into issues with FR2 and ended up running without it for awhile. But with SP21 they started supporting FR2, so we went back with no issues. But prior to that we expericed some of the things you are talking about, also some icon painting where they would show up as black squares.

Nick
 
Hi,

When I was supporting XE, SP19 Win 2K with Citrix XP servers, I ran into similar problems. I found that incorporating a regular full package build and deploy once per week for the TS servers did the trick. I know this is only an avoidance technique, but it worked.
 
Jon,

full package build for production everyweek. No update builds. Generate DD and Global Tables specs as well.
 
You guys who think building full packages and deploying weekly are really comedians or Oracle spies, right? I don't know about your situations, but in ours it takes 14 hours to build a full package, plus the time to build global table specs plus deployment time. My boss tells me we're not allowed to bankrupt the company by having people here 24/7 building and deploying full packages.

If anyone has a REAL solution to this problem, I'd like to hear it.
 
bukosknr,

we are on FR2 SP2. We are also experiencing weird icon painting at times. What one-off are you running with SP21? Are your WTS dedicated to OneWorld? Do you have any special Citrix feature enabled that's not there by default?

Thanks,
 
We have experienced similar issues and what we found was that there are three different places to set the Color Palette and the Window Size for a PC / Citrix / JDE connection. Once we had both color and size all setup the same, our problems stopped.

First check under your Citrix Published Application Manager as to what your Windows Colors are set to. We use True Color 24 bit. Then check the Window Size. We use 1024 x 768.

Second on the workstation under the Citrix Program Neighborhood check the Application Set Setting’s Published Icon’s Default Options and what the Windows Colors are set as. Again we use True Color 24 bit. Then check the Window Size. Again we use 1024 x 768 or Seamless Windows.

Third check on the workstation what the Desktop’s Display Settings for Color Palette is set as. Again we use True Color. Also check the Desktop Area size. We use 1024 x 768.

We still on occasions have a problem when a user changes their workstations display settings. But once they are changed back to True Color and 1024 x 768 and they have rebooted, JDE works fine.
 
Package build - 6hrs
R92TAM - 10 minutes
R98CRTGL - 5 minute
Deployment - 10 minutes per server

Assuming you have a farm of citrix servers, you could deploy the packages to
each machine in turn??
Regards

Kieran Fitzgerald
 
Joy,

your findings are very interesting. I will see if this resolves our issues and I will keep you guys posted.

On a side note, I've also been suspecting application incompatability. We run Microsoft Office and Lotus Notes along with OneWorld on our new Windows 2000 Terminal Servers. Does anyone have Lotus Notes and OneWorld running on the same server?

Thanks,
 
I fixed some similar problems with the same solution that Joy outlines. Also, look at the client PC to see if there are any printers installed that Citrix doesn't support. Printer drivers and Citrix are nasty, cruel, tricksy things...
 
I am now runng SP21_E1 with Feature Release 2. You can set your FR inside of the Citrix Management Console right click the server and choose Feature Release level, it is a drop down.

As far as printer drivers, we use the UPD for citrix. It has its limitations none of which have been a hang up. Before we used FR2 we used a product called ScrewDrivers FXP this product was a universal print driver, it worked great. Only bummer was the updating client / servers with new releases.

We haven't ever messed with client settings for desktop colors or resoulution. I know in the SP21 one off list, it did break down some of the Citrix issues. (the "fixed" list) And also with SP21 is when JDE "offcially" support FR2 according to our account rep...

Nick
 
Thanks for all the hints and advices. (Un)fortunately (!?) package build and deploy did not help. I'll try the other suggestions.
 
WRaunecker, what MDAC level are you at? Since you have an NT/SQL enterprise server, make sure you are not using MDAC 2.7 SP1...it has delay problems.

I ran into similiar problems with AS/400 right after V5R2. My Client Access version had a problematic CWBODBC.DLL that caused delays in ODBC threads. Opening a new interactive program does something with ODBC. Speeding up ODBC connections fixed my problem with interactive versionson Citrix.

Good Luck.

Ryan Hunt
 
Ryan,
You mentioned that you are on V5R2 and observed some issues with the dll for odbc, can you please provide some details and how you solved your issue. We think we have the same issue at our end too.
 
Back
Top