Screensaver doesn't work in XenDesktop 7.1

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Recently I have been running a proof of concept for XenDesktop 7.1 for my company. This has been really interesting, especially around the XenApp integration into the new architecture.

I created a Windows 7 template which I had planned to give to my PoC users. We have spent a lot of time on making sure that every little bit of the Windows UI is tailored for our users in our production environment, so I wanted to ensure the Windows 7 environment was as similar as possible.
It seems I am spending a lot of time in GPMC.msc (group policy management console) at the moment!

Just before releasing this to our users I noticed that the screensaver wasn't kicking in. We set this to ensure that their desktop session is locked for security purposes. I checked all of the policies and they were spot on??? I even tried setting this manually in the HKCU registry...but nothing?

So after exhausted this avenue I did a bit of a Google search. I found that this is a known issue in XenDesktop 7.1

http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/xendesktop-7/cds-70-known-issues.html

•Screen savers and the power-save option are disabled in XenDesktop sessions. Edit the registry and create the following DWORD value:

HKLM\Software\Citrix\Graphics\SetDisplayRequiredMode = 0

This change does not prevent the remote machine screen saver or power save mode from coming on. If the power save mode comes on, the remote session is not updated until the user provides input (mouse/keyboard), but the screen will not be blanked. [#380550]

It looks like Citrix have enabled something to stop power options causing issues. I could imagine that having sleep set to 15 minutes could cause some real havoc to your XenDesktop environment.

So I entered the registry key HKLM\Software\Citrix\Graphics\SetDisplayRequiredMode = 0 into GPO preferences, updated the VM and it is now working.

To ensure that power options definitely do not cause an issue I created a power option template in GPO preferences.




I hope this saves you the time I lost trying to fix this! Cheers Sam

Comments

  1. Chris6 August 2014 at 14:26

    Hi,

    I’m experiencing the same issue in our Xendesktop 7.1 environment. The SetDisplayRequiredMode is set to 0 but still the screensaver doesn’t kick in. Are there any other setting I can look at to get this working?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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