I realize this is a cross post that I have in the VAD channel but now that I've narrowed an issue down to WEM thought i'd try here too. we've been battling an issue with our MCS persistent VM's where after a user logs in and they get to their desktop, the Start Menu and Explorer are not responsive for anywhere from 15-30 seconds. Through some troubeshooting I narrowed it down to the "process registry values" feature of WEM as the culprit. even if i have zero registry actions assigned, just having that feature enabled stalls that part of the login for close to 15 seconds (longer if i assign registry actions of course). I discovered this when i switched to the cmd agent where it shows in the pop up what steps its at. its possible that ANY of those features that run before registry are also part of the issue i suppose. weird thing is when theres no assigned registry actions it still sits there trying for that length of time. anyone run into this or have any ideas?

I think there was some mention of using the Group Policy feature instead of Registry. I do occasionally see this pause for no reason at all but it is not consistent, so I never actually cared to look into it.

I've never seen that one before. If you wanted to dig deeper, remotely run ProcMon and capture a logon session to see if it points to something.

The WEM actions are processed after the login is finished. So it should not block the logon process.

thanks i'll take a look at that! and correct that was the reason we went w/ WEM for some of these instead of GP to not slow the login process down...which it DOES....unless you're using the Registry option apparently since it appears to halt Explorer/Start Menu until it finishes whatever it is doing (like i said even if i JUST have it enabled and nothing assigned it hangs things for a bit)

What other settings do you have configured in WEM? Cache for Accelerate actions processing? Bypass ie4uinit check? Enable VDI compatibility? All of those would help speed things up.

checking now 🙂 i know we have VDI compatability for sure

Yeah, if you are on WEM Service and not on-prem, use the new web console. I can't recall if it's available for on-prem instances, but if it is, give it a shot.

we're on-prem for both Citrix and WEM for what its worth

It used to have issues long ago, but it has been rock solid for a long time now. We use those settings for thousands of VDAs with great success.

bad ass thanks man!

have you enabled the async printers processing?

I don’t believe the OP is claiming it is blocking login process. What he’s saying is user interaction with the logged in system is blocked for X seconds. We also have seen this periodically over the years, usually around the “processing environmental settings” stage where it will hang for a good 20 seconds or more. We use the popup window with a customized logo so we can see which stage WEM is in on login. It’s not been a big deal so we have let it continue, but following this thread with interest.

correct, the logon process works fine (main reason we use WEM for this so that they can run after that stage) and right, its user interaction thats blocked for 30ish seconds after you see the desktop/taskbar. I have switched to cmd agent launch to see the step as well and like i said it seems to be at the registry actions stage. I've considered throwing them all in a cmd and seeing if having them run as an external action makes any difference. that'd be dumb if that helps but might try it. and @Sharp Guo no i did not have that enabled but thank you! i'll try that!

Enable Debug Logging (I leave that on in every config set/environment anyway), and maybe that will give you a little more info to go on.

ok dumb question....where does that debug log live once you enable it? i thought it was under appdata somewhere but not seeing it. and another weird thing going on is in the past i thought when i refreshed cache from an agent in the management console it would update the last connection time stamp (kind of forcing a refresh). now it just kind of blinks and last connection doesnt change. i think we're haunted lol

Same log file, just gives you verbose logging. It's very helpful, and IMO should be the default setting.

but is that the one thats usually in appdata?

Yep, for both log files.

well what the hell....i'm not seeing anything in my appdata. do you mind sharing the location you see yours?

I'm off today, but here's a screenshot of the settings I used at my last place:

no problem thanks! ahhh my bad, wasnt in appdata! thanks!

%userprofile% is the default, not %appdata%. I changed the new place to %appdata% for ease of accessing it.

yup i gotcha! thanks man

%AppData% should also be default (you reading this, Citrix? 🙂 )

agreed

Good! By the way, here is the document for the WEM log. just for your reference. https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/workspace-environment-management/current-release/reference/view-log-files.html

thanks! I actually dug in the the debug logging after @Nick Panaccio mentioned that too and was super helpful to see what was going on