Application randomly "Not Responding"

[Jay Stevens]

Hello,

Has anyone run into issues with applications freezing, “Not Responding” and greyed-out UI when running as seamless published application in XenApp 6.5.  We don’t see such issues when running the same application on the same server but as RemoteApp or in published desktop.  I see number of similar threads but related to Windows XP rather, all our workstations are Windows 7 running Receiver 3.4.   While troubleshooting I have done the following so far:

-          Installed all MS patches

-          Installed XenApp 6.5 Rollup Pack 3

-          Tried almost every combination of seamless flags

-          Excluded application executable from CTX hooks

-          Tried different published app appearance settings

-          Updated hardware drivers and firmware as all workers servers are physical machines with no page file.

Could it be Windows 2008 issue?  The two apps are .NET apps and we have never experienced this in old PS 4.5.  The symptoms are that while the app is busy talking to database the “Not Responding” will display in title bar and at times the application window will grey-out.  Usually after 5-20 seconds the app recovers.

 

Any help will be highly appreciated.

Thanks,

 

Jay

 

 

[Christophe CATUREGLI]

Dear Jay stevens

i've exactly the same problem on Application requesting database (not responding) only on windows 2008...

the same application works fine on windows 2003 (applications is also compliant with W2K8...)

 

have you find root cause ? or workaround ?

 

Thnaks a lot for your help

[Rasmus Kindberg]

Dear Jay stevens

i've exactly the same problem on Application requesting database (not responding) only on windows 2008...

the same application works fine on windows 2003 (applications is also compliant with W2K8...)

 

have you find root cause ? or workaround ?

 

Thnaks a lot for your help

 

Do you have the XA policy Memory Optimization enabled? Try disabling that and see if that makes a difference.

[Christophe CATUREGLI]

i've not applied this policy ..

[Fabian Sauer]

Anyone solved that problem ? Same for me on Server 2012 R2 with XenApp 7.8

Regards

Fabian

[Trentent Tye1709154151]

I've just come across this issue as well and have some findings.

 

With my application, when I RDP into the system I can replicate the same issue, the application goes to 'Not Responding' when using a certain feature (in this case it opens and sets MSPaint as the upper most window and blocks access to the app until MSPaint is closed).  This is caused by Windows detecting that the UI thread is blocked.  This timeout will also 'Ghost or Frost' the window.

 

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/meason/2010/01/04/windows-error-reporting-for-hangs/

 

The users reported this didn't occur on their previous system (a Windows 2003 server now long retired).  I found that if I modify the value of 'HungAppTimeout' to 20000 (20 seconds) then the application does not go into the 'Not Responding'.  I spoke to the developer and they said that they check every ~5 seconds or so to see if MSPaint is open and if true 'lock the UI'.  This corresponds nearly exactly to the default 5 second timeout of HungAppTimeout and also explains why it was inconsistent for my users.  When the app did its check every 5 seconds sometimes it would refresh its UI preventing it from 'Ghosting'.  But it was really inconsistent..

 

Anyways, modifying the HungAppTimeout value to a larger timeout prevents 'Ghosting'/'Not Responding' and gives the application more time to recover itself before Windows locks its UI.

 

You can modify/create the value here:

Registry key: HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop
Data type: REG_SZ
Value name: HungAppTimeout
Data: Milliseconds (in decimal)

 

 

For it to take effect you need to logoff/logon so it needs to be in your NTUSER.DAT.  winlogon.exe processes this key for it to take effect.

[Trentent Tye1709154151]

For additional information.

 

 

I have blogged about this issue here:

 

Citrix XenApp – Graphical Artifacts

[Fabian Sauer]

Hi Tretent,

thank you for the RegKey. This RegKey hides my problem for the users a little bit because there is no more Not Respoding at all. But i am sure that we still have a network problem.

Cheers

Fabian

[Thorsten Ellmers1709153287]

hm

 

did a test. if i setup this regkey. published desktop stay's gray.

 

Server 2016 running on Moonshot Cartridge with PVS.

VDA already on 7.17

 

not tested published apps

 

thx and remain

Thorsten

[Nigel Lopez]

Adding the registry key HungAppTimeout = 300000 solved our issue with applications getting frozen and not updating the information on screen.

 

To apply it to all users we've created a GPO with loopback processing.

 

Thanks for the tip :)