How-to disable GPU Hardware Acceleration for Teams in Citrix for all users

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to disable GPU Hardware Acceleration for Teams in Citrix for all users. If the Virtual Desktop does not have a GPU/vGPU, Citrix recommends to disable GPU hardware acceleration in Teams (link). This cannot be done by policy or registry but by editing a json-file in the AppData directory.

I will describe in this article how I managed this with a simple Powershell script which you can run at logon.

Preparations

  • Administrator privileges are required
  • User policy needed for placing the startup script

Create or use a user-based policy where you want to use the Powershell script and use the contents of the script below. This script will first check if the json-file is present. If not, the user have never started Teams and the json-file is not present and will therefor not be edited.

$configPath = "$env:APPDATA\Microsoft\Teams\desktop-config.json"
$FileExists = Test-Path $configPath

if ($FileExists -eq $true) {

    $a = Get-Content $configPath | ConvertFrom-Json

    if ($a.appPreferenceSettings -match "disableGpu") {
        $a.appPreferenceSettings.disableGpu = $true
    } else {
        $a.appPreferenceSettings | Add-Member -Name "disableGpu" -MemberType NoteProperty -Value $true
    }

    $a | ConvertTo-Json | Set-Content $configPath
}

How-to fix “An app default has been reset” notification for PDF-files on Windows 10

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to stop the “An app default has been reset” notification in Windows 10 for PDF-files. Windows resets PDF files to Edge.

I will describe in this article how i got rid of this notification for a VDI solution.

Preparations

  • Administrator privileges are required

Open registry and navigate in current user to: HKU\SOFTWARE\Classes\AppXd4nrz8ff68srnhf9t5a8sbjyar1cr723

Create 2 REG_SZ keys with no values in them:
– NoOpenWith
– NoStaticDefaultVerb

How-to stop “We are adding some new features to Windows” pop-ups to Windows 10

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to stop the “We are adding some new features to Windows” pop-ups in Windows 10. I was struggling with this in an enterprise VDI environment even when all language components were installed.

I will describe in this article how i got rid of these pop-ups.

Preparations

  • Administrator privileges are required

Table of contents

  1. Option 1: Install failing language files
  2. Option 2: Disable the task schedule

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Assign App Layers to a different OS Layer with Citrix App Layering 4.11

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to assign an existing App Layer to another OS Layer. Tested with Citrix App Layering 4.11.

Citrix does not give the opportunity to do this on the Layering Management Console (yet). Why would you want to do this? Well, in my case we had a lot of App Layers build on a Windows 10 v.1703 OS Layer. We didn’t want to upgrade the OS Layer to v.1709 but want a new clean v.1709 OS Layer. So we built a new one. There is only one problem. All the App Layers were attached to the v.1703 OS Layer and we couldn’t use them for our v.1709 OS Layer so we had to re-create all the App Layers.

We contacted Citrix and they said it should work elastically but we didn’t use elastic layering. After some testing we found a work-around to use our App Layers to a different OS Layer. In this article i will describe how-to do this.

Preparations

  • Administrator privileges are required
  • 7-Zip application needed
  • Notepad++ or Notepad needed

Table of contents

  1. Getting the OS Layer ID’s
    1.1 Export a new App Layer
    1.2 Export an existing App Layer
  2. Edit the App
    2.1 Edit the JSON-file
    2.2 Re-create the archive
  3. Importing the App Layer

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How-to remove Connect and Mixed Reality Portal from Windows 10

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to remove the Connect and Mixed Reality Portal apps from Windows 10. Tested on Windows 10 1703. I was struggling with this in an enterprise VDI environment. I don’t get why Microsoft would enable these apps on an enterprise ISO.

I will describe in this article how to remove these apps when Windows is already installed and how it can be removed from the original ISO. If you are using an deployment technique like SCCM follow this blog. This blog helped me finding the right folders.

Warning: Removing these apps might cause Windows Update not to work.

Preparations

  • Windows 10 installed or original ISO available
  • Administrator privileges are required
  • Imgburn application needed

Table of contents

  1. Remove from original ISO
    1.1 Extract ISO
    1.2 Preperations
    1.3 Removing the Apps
    1.4 Recreating the ISO
    1.5 (optional) removing other Modern Apps
  2. Remove from already installed Windows
    2.1 Preperations
    2.2 Creating a batch file
    2.3 Creating a task
    2.4 Cleaning up

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How-to create a Telegram bot on your Raspberry Pi

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to create a Telegram bot on your Raspberry Pi with Python. I will add some text and image features for this bot and i will describe how you can keep your bot private.

Preparations

  • SSH enabled on your Raspberry Pi
  • Putty installed
  • (optional) WinSCP installed

Table of contents

  1. Install Telegram
  2. Request a bot
  3. Install telepot on your Raspberry Pi
  4. Create your bot
    4.1 Preparations
    4.2 Reply with random text line
    4.3 Reply with random image
    4.4 Reply with random moving GIF
  5. (optional) Make your bot private
  6. (optional) Add the created functions to the bot
  7. (optional) Start your bot automatically at Raspberry Pi boot

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How-to schedule a VPN connection on Synology DSM 7

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to schedule a VPN connection on your Synology. I asked Synology if it was possible to do this but they said it couldn’t be done. You can manually start and stop a VPN connection so it didn’t make sense this couldn’t be done automatically. It’s actually pretty simple and i want to share this with you. I even included logging so you can check if the connection was disconnected.

This is last tested with DSM 7.0-41890

Preparations

  • SSH enabled on your Synology
  • VPN connection created on your Synology
  • Create a share on your Synology we are going to use
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Black or grey screen fix for Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop 7.6 on Windows Server 2008R2

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how-to fix a black or grey screen with XenApp or XenDesktop 7.6 and Windows Server 2008R2.

Preparations

  • XenApp/XenDesktop installed
  • Administrator privileges are required

Black or grey screen fix for Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop 7.6 on Windows Server 2008R2

I encountered a black and grey screen on Citrix Xenapp 7.6 on Windows Server 2008R2. I found multiple fixes which worked for me. Try one of these three fixes/workarounds.

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How-to directly start an Application on StoreFront 3.0

In this step-by-step guide I will describe how you can directy start an Application on StoreFront. Normally a desktop will auto-launch when you only have 1 desktop so why would you want to auto-launch an application on StoreFront? If you are using StoreFront 3.0 and you add a XenApp 6.5 Data Collector to your store it will see your XenApp 6.5 desktop as an Application on StoreFront and not as a desktop. In this case you would like to start an application if you want your older XenApp 6.5 desktop to start. I have tested this on StoreFront 3.0 with XenApp 6.5 Data Collectors.

Preparations

  • StoreFront server installed
  • Administrator privileges are required

Notes and considerations

  • After updating or upgrading StoreFront you probably should follow this instructions again to remove the button

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