Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops (CVAD) Policies Are Not Applying Correctly

The steps apply to CVAD LTSR and CR releases.

There is a Citrix Policy being pushed out through Microsoft Active Directory that contains out of date information. To find that Policy do a CDF trace on the Citrix Policies modules from CDF Control. Download CDF Control from here.

1. Open CDF Control.

2. From the Trace Categories drop-down list select Citrix Policies and the All option.

3. Run CDF Control on the VDA servers.

4. Click the Start Tracing button before you launch your ICA session.

5. Click the Stop Tracing button after the ICA session launches. Press F3 and select .etl file to parse it.
   The modules that are traced and the output must be visible in CDF Controls window.

6. Look through the trace output for Citrix Polices being applied from your domain control.
   Note: Call Citrix Technical Support if you might need help with this step.

7. Use CDF Controls FIND option to help identify the offending policy.

8. From the CDF Control tool Bar, select View > Find.

9. In the Find dialog, search by any of the following till the policy being applied is located, and the GUID assigned to that policy is found.

• SysVol
• Policies
• GroupPolicy
• Policies.gpf

  Note: When the Policy is found, you will know the right one, as the modified date will be a previous date. In the following screenshot the policy was last modified in November 18^th 2011 which is outdated, and must be updated when the policy is updated, which is not updated creating this issue.

10. Note the GUID associated with the policy identified in Step 9. In this example it is {4E3F75C5-C8EC-4457-870B-99D9B30344DA} your policy will be different.
    

11. Ensure it is a Citrix Policy that must be located in a Citrix Folder as seen in the preceding screen shot. After verifying it is a Citrix policy, browse to that folder with the GUID number noted in Step 10, and delete the User and Machine folders in it. 
    Caution! Do not delete the GPT.ini file.
    The folders should be located on your Windows Domain controller(s) under \\DCNAME\SYSVOL\domainname\policies\GUID
    

12. Ensure Citrix policy is removed, not a Microsoft policy. Open the User or Machine folder and verify if a Citrix folder is present.
    

13. After both folders are removed, go to command prompt on the same server and run gpupdate /force. 
    This recreates the policy folders and files within them which must resolve the issue. 

Problem Cause

This is caused by Citrix Policies applied using Microsoft’s Group Policy Management Console from the Domain that are either corrupted or not being updated.
Note: Policies are only found in the SYSVOL folder if they have been applied through Microsoft’s Group Policy Management Console.

Policies are stored in multiple locations including the DataStore and Domain Controller depending on where your Citrix Policies policies were created.

• If created from the Studio they are stored in the CVAD database.

• If created from the Microsoft Group Policy Management Console they are stored in the Microsoft Domain Controller(s) SysVol folder.

If deleting the policy folders on the Microsoft Domain Controller (s) does not resolve the issue, clear the locally cached policies on each VDA machine in the Site followed by running a gpupdate /force on each server.
The locally cached policies are located in the following locations on the VDA Server: (Delete the files and folders in each location but not the actual folder that contains them).
C:\ProgramData\Citrix\GroupPolicy

C:\ProgramData\CitrixCseCache

C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Citrix\GroupPolicy

C:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicy\User\Citrix\GroupPolicy