Shadow feature broken after VDA update to 2206

[Mike_B]

After our maintenance weekend a couple of weeks ago, when the Win10 VDIs were patched with July's MS updates and had VDA 2206 installed, I am told by our service desk they are now unable to shadow users from the Monitor page in Citrix Cloud.  I get the same problem when testing, too.

 

Anyone else seen this?  It's across multiple catalogs, so it's not just a single master image with an issue.  Works fine to non-Win10 machines in the same subnet, so I don't think it's a network issue.

[Jeff Riechers]

What's the error you get?  Could be either a remote assistance or a citrix issue depending on the error.

[Mike_B]

It says that another remote assistance session is already in use:

 

However I have tested removing 2206 and installing the 2203 CU1 VDA instead though, and it seems to work fine with that - so this coming weekend (when we are patching anyway) I plan to roll that out.

[Jeff Riechers]

I see the same thing with my 2206 machines.  Do you see the following error on the remote machine when triggering support request?

 

Faulting application name: RAServer.exe, version: 10.0.20348.112, time stamp: 0x518ba1f2
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.20348.859, time stamp: 0xf9a05648
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000201dc
Faulting process id: 0xacc
Faulting application start time: 0x01d8b300c0ad0a8d
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\System32\RAServer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 944b127d-ce09-4c77-8962-e017bf0e0ffc
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

 

[Balint Oberrauch]

We are experiencing the same issue on VDA 2206. No difference when adding msra.exe to the Citrix Hooks. Operating System is Windows Server 2022 (21H2). 

 

 

 

 

  

 

[Mike_B]

19 hours ago, Jeff Riechers1709152667 said:

I see the same thing with my 2206 machines.  Do you see the following error on the remote machine when triggering support request?

 

Faulting application name: RAServer.exe, version: 10.0.20348.112, time stamp: 0x518ba1f2
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.20348.859, time stamp: 0xf9a05648
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000201dc
Faulting process id: 0xacc
Faulting application start time: 0x01d8b300c0ad0a8d
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\System32\RAServer.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 944b127d-ce09-4c77-8962-e017bf0e0ffc
Faulting package full name: 
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

 

 

Yes, I get exactly the same message.

 

I have resolved the issue by using 2203 CU1 VDA instead.  Maybe it will work for you as well.

[Jeff Riechers]

I opened a bug report with Citrix, hopefully it will be fixed in 2209.

[Sven Pfeifer]

Hi at All,

 

we have the same issue in VDA 2206 on Windows 10 /11 VDI's and we are a little bit surprised that there is no gerneral information about this.

 

Version 2206 is available since a few weeks.

 

We will open a Case will see what Citrix tells.

 

 

[Grzegorz Iskra]

Dear All, I started working on this. Looks like a possible issue with one of the hooks.

Can you exclude RAserver.exe from Shell Hook and test?

(Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_DLLs\Shell Hook)

There should be empty 'Exclude' REG_MULTI_SZ 

You can add RAserver.exe there.

[kdfctx1]

If we add the "exclusion" regkey - shadow is working again (for logged in sessions). BUT if someone login on VDA  with Citrix Client he got a blank screen. Applications are running on the server but the client windows is empty. RDP is working fine. (only Citrix client affected)
 

 

But if i add the "RAServer.exe" to
Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\CtxUvi 
Value Name: UviProcessExcludes

it works now. Shadow and Citrix Login work's fine.  

Restart VDA to take effect

[Grzegorz Iskra]

Yes, i initially also observed grey screen but it was before reboot (persistent one) + i made some other changes.

Uvi exclusion will exclude all hooks but this should not matter for this particular process.

[Don Joly]

On 8/26/2022 at 9:52 AM, Grzegorz Iskra said:

Dear All, I started working on this. Looks like a possible issue with one of the hooks.

Can you exclude RAserver.exe from Shell Hook and test?

(Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook\AppInit_DLLs\Shell Hook)

There should be empty 'Exclude' REG_MULTI_SZ 

You can add RAserver.exe there.

 

FYI - We excluded RAserver.exe as you suggested which resolved the issue of being unable to shadow users in our non-persistent Windows 10 VDA environment but doing so presented another issue as a result of adding this exclude. When users click Start...Disconnect and login from another endpoint they get a gray screen and after 5 minutes the VDA reboots. If they don't manually disconnect from the session and instead just walk over and logon from another endpoint their session pulls up fine.

 

Can anyone confirm the same? I'll be opening up a ticket in the morning. If anyone has had a ticket open for this issue can you please provide the ticket number here and provide any info you have? TIA!

[Joe Mika]

Thanks, this also seems to be a problem with server 2022 running virtual apps.  The registry key seems to be the fix.

[Dennis van der Velde]

On 9/13/2022 at 3:29 AM, Don Joly said:

 

FYI - We excluded RAserver.exe as you suggested which resolved the issue of being unable to shadow users in our non-persistent Windows 10 VDA environment but doing so presented another issue as a result of adding this exclude. When users click Start...Disconnect and login from another endpoint they get a gray screen and after 5 minutes the VDA reboots. If they don't manually disconnect from the session and instead just walk over and logon from another endpoint their session pulls up fine.

 

Can anyone confirm the same? I'll be opening up a ticket in the morning. If anyone has had a ticket open for this issue can you please provide the ticket number here and provide any info you have? TIA!

 

We encountered the same issue, did you receive an update yet? The above mentioned registry keys work for shadowing but break the whole session after disconnecting it.