Citrix Director Shows A Blank Page With A Spinning Wheel After Entering The Credentials

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Article ID: CTX695937

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Updated On:

Description

  • Citrix Director remains stuck at a blank page with a spinning wheel or shows and infinite loading spinner after entering the credentials.

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  • Issue is not seen on an independent test Director server when pointing to the same DDC and is specific to particular Director server.
  • Event log on Director do not show any relevant errors.
  • Reinstalling Citrix Director does not help.

Environment

"Citrix is not responsible for and does not endorse or accept any responsibility for the contents or your use of these third party Web sites. Citrix is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement by Citrix of the linked Web site. It is your responsibility to take precautions to ensure that whatever Web site you use is free of viruses or other harmful items." 

Cause

  • HAR logs show "404 Not Found" for http://localhost/Director/web/locales/en-US.json even though the file es-ES.json is present in C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Director\web\locales on Director server.
  • No calls seen in HAR after GetInitializationData .

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CDF Logs 

  • No progress is seen after GetInitializationData service in Director CDF logs:

 14:21:14:72755,412,676,w3wp.exe,0,DirectorService,,0,,,5,EntryExit,"[t:16, s:unknown]EXIT: GetInitializationData service returning","TraceId=17ae0b915874f844111c2adc047a8af5, SpanId=0782ff100c7ecae6, TransactionId=17ae0b91-5874-f844-111c-2adc047a8af5"
13048,0,2025/12/24 14:21:14:90130,412,676,w3wp.exe,0,DirectorService,,0,,,1,Information,"Activity stop: Citrix.Dmc.WebService.ConsoleService:/Director/service.svc/web/GetInitializationData","TraceId=17ae0b915874f844111c2adc047a8af5, SpanId=0782ff100c7ecae6, ParentId=0000000000000000, TransactionId=17ae0b91-5874-f844-111c-2adc047a8af5, span.name=/Director/service.svc/web/GetInitializationData, span.kind=Server, thread.id=16, TraceFlags=None, span.starttime=2025-12-24T19:21:14.4683517Z, span.duration=00:00:00.4452560, http.host=::1, http.method=POST, http.user_agent=""Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/143.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"", http.url=http://localhost/Director/service.svc/web/GetInitializationData, CallerIP=::1, net.peer.ip=::1, http.scheme=http, http.request_content_length=2"

  • Comparing the MIME Types in IIS Manager of a working and non-working Director server, it is found that .json MIME type is missing on non-working Director Server. The MIME types are inherited from the Parent IIS site.

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  • By default, IIS may not serve files with an unknown MIME type, resulting in a 404 error. You must explicitly configure IIS to recognize and serve .json files. 

Resolution

Follow the below steps to add .json MIME Type on the non-working Director server: 


1. Open IIS Manager  -->  Launch Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager on the server.
2. Select the Server -->    Choose the server node in the Connections panel.
3. Access MIME Types  -->  Double-click on MIME Types in the Features View.
4. Add a New MIME Type  -->Enter .json for the extension and application/json for the MIME type.

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5. Check that the new MIME type is listed.
6. Restart IIS  to apply changes.

Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/developer/webapps/iis/site-behavior-performance/troubleshoot-404-file-not-found-error

 

Issue/Introduction

This article describes an issue with Citrix Director due to .json MIME type missing.

Additional Information

Q1. What Are MIME Types ?

A MIME type (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a label that describes the format of a file and how it should be processed. 

Examples:

image/png → PNG images

application/json → JSON data

application/pdf → PDF files

 

Q2. Why MIME Types Matter in IIS?

When IIS serves a file, it looks at the file extension (e.g., .html, .json, .mp4), matches it to a MIME type and sends the file with the correct Content-Type HTTP header.

If a file extension does not have a MIME type configured, IIS may:

  • Refuse to serve the file
  • Return 404.3 Not Found – MIME type not supported
  • Cause the browser to download or misinterpret the file.

 

Q3. Why does .json MIME type matter for Citrix Director functioning?

Director’s web UI and APIs rely on JSON files being served correctly by IIS. If IIS doesn’t recognize .json, Director will partially or completely fail to load.

Director uses JSON for:

  • Dashboard data
  • Session and user details
  • Machine and delivery group info
  • Localization (language files)
  • Front-end JavaScript data binding

If those JSON payloads never reach the browser, the UI breaks.

 

 

 

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