Host process for Windows Tasks has stopped working error within Hosted Shared Desktop on Windows 7 Endpoint

[Phil Done]

We are currently running a Citrix XenApp 7.15 LTSR CU3 environment and a variety of users are experiencing the following error when logging into their Hosted Shared Desktop and clicking on search or the taskbar:

Error - "Host Process for Windows Tasks has stopped working".

One observation we have identified is that this only effects users who are working on an endpoint running the Windows 7/Windows 7 Embedded Operating Systems (patched up to date). The preferred version of Citrix Receiver is 4.9 CU7 for our solution, however both earlier and later versions have been tested on the Windows 7 endpoints without success. The main event in the application logs when the error occurs is as follows:

Event ID – 1000 / Source – Application Error / Main Level - Error

Faulting application name: taskhostw.exe, version: 10.0.14393.0, time stamp: 0x57899a8f
Faulting module name: InputService.dll, version: 10.0.14393.2608, time stamp: 0x5bd1349b
Exception code: 0xc000041d
Fault offset: 0x0000000000023a78
Faulting process id: 0x2f70
Faulting application start time: 0x01d57f44c0cda42c
Faulting application path: C:\windows\system32\taskhostw.exe
Faulting module path: C:\windows\system32\InputService.dll
Report Id: 4b5e23e1-d09b-42f6-aae6-e2939f4f7ec6
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

The error is not seen when users are working on endpoints running Windows 10.

We have also now excluded McAfee Anti-Virus as the root cause of the issue

We have also carried out some testing with the keyboard settings on a Windows 7 machine.  When the keyboard on the local workstation is set to English (United Kingdom) then there are no errors shown in the Citrix Hosted Shared Desktop, however when the keyboard on the local workstation is set to English (United States) then any time the end user interacts with the start menu of the Citrix Desktop the “Host Process” error is displayed.

[Phil Done]

We have now identified the fix for this issue.  There is a missing registry key for the US keyboard setting.  We have implemented the following GPO on the XenApp Server 2016 VDA's:

 

“HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\00000409”

NameTypeData

(Default)REG_SZ(value not set)

Layout Display NameREG_EXPAND_SZ@%SystemRoot%\system32\input.dll,-5000

Layout FileREG_DZKBDUS.DLL

Layout TextREG_SZUS

 

We have carried out a test with the user and the "Host Process Issue" is no longer present".