users get "Error 500".

Open the C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config on the storefront server. Locate the following setting /configuration/system.applicationHost/applicationPools

Then we have to add the always running paramter on each application pool for instance the authentication pane we need to add the startMode=”AlwaysRunning” on each ofthem.

<add name=»Citrix Delivery Services Authentication»
autoStart=»true» managedRuntimeVersion=»v2.0″
managedPipelineMode=»Integrated» startMode=»AlwaysRunning»>

And you might have the following application pools in the config that needs to have this paramter.

• Citrix Delivery Services Authentication
• Citrix Delivery Services Resources
• Citrix Receiver for Web
• Citrix Delivery Services

If you remember the above fix was already in place on a most of the servers with the Citrix Delivery Services missing on a few of them, a copy and paste later we were good to go.

Now after we have done that in the same document we have to change under the /configuration/system.applicationHost/sites we need to add the preloadEnabled=”true” paramter. So for instance for the authentication application

<application path=»/Citrix/Authentication»
applicationPool=»Citrix Delivery Services Authentication»
preloadEnabled=»true»>

This paramter needs to be added for all the Citrix Applications (Depending for instance if AG is setup)

• /AGServices
• /Citrix/Authentication
• /Citrix/Roaming
• /Citrix/<StoreName>
• /Citrix/<StoreName>Web

We made this change to all stores and storeweb entries in the file

Save the document and run iisreset. The 500 errors disappeared, we did see one instance where it came back but I think we found we were either looking at the wrong server or forgot to run an iisreset. We then retested and the issue did not appear again.

There were also a couple of steps I left out due to the fact we saw results after the above solutions were put in place. You may be able to further optimize if you wish by performing the following.

Under the section /configuration/system.webServer we need to add

<applicationInitialization skipManagedModules=»true»>
<add initializationPage=»/endpoints/v1″ />
</applicationInitialization>

On each of the following config files.

After this is done we need to change the Store config file which is located under C:\inetpub\wwwroot\Citrix\<StoreName>Web\web.config
Under the same section as those above we need to add the following parameters.

<applicationInitialization skipManagedModules=»true»>
<add initializationPage=»/Home/Index» />
</applicationInitialization>

After that is done save the config, and do an IIS reset.

All of these fixes were put in place due to Server 2008R2 inability to optimize ASP/IIS out of the box. If you would like to completely remove the need for these kinds of fixes a server OS upgrade to 2012 is recommended by Microsoft.

Problem Cause