Category Archives: Windows 10

Sluggish performance within Windows 7/10 VDI session (Non network related!)

by in Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, Hardware, Horizon View, Infrastructure Checks, Lakeside, Systrack, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized, vCentre, VMware, VROPs, vSphere, Windows 10, Windows 7 | Leave a comment

I’ve come across this now with multiple customers. Most of the time it’s showing up when people are moving to windows 10, after experiencing poor performance with W7 desktop VMs and as part of the migration process, they buy all new tin.

They experience sluggish responses when opening various apps and for example with IE, it’s painfully obvious that something is wrong. It will spike the CPU to a high percentage, take quite a while to open, then the CPU will drop and it’ll be OK for browsing until more tabs are opened and similar behaviour will occur.

When this occurs, I always ask if there’s any resource pools set, any QoS or similar on the storage and so on, but generally, I know there isn’t. vSphere monitoring will show that everything is OK, so will anywhere you look within Horizon and vROPs. I’ll ask if the physical hardware has power management/saving on within the BIOS and I usually get the following answers:

“Oh, I’m sure it’s been turned off, but I didn’t build the servers”

“Yep, no power management, vSphere says so.”

“I don’t know. How do you even do that?”

“I’ve asked and they say it has been.”

Every time. Every. Time. 

It can be difficult to definitely show that this is the source of the problem when everything you have access to says it all should be OK, plus people also have many different levels of experience with these things. I came across it about 7 years ago when the company I worked for had a mix of Dell and HP servers and being a PC gaming enthusiast, I was always trying to eke out as much performance of a PC as I could, so I tried to do the same with servers – no overclocking though! So power saving settings would be the first thing to get turned off!

So if you’re experience similar problems, with apps spiking the CPU, being sluggish, then the CPU dropping, check your physical hardware to make sure power management isn’t set to power saving, it’ll save you a whole load of heart ache! This also applies to Citrix as well.

If you need proof of this, or want to check it, there’s various tools, but I always check using Systrack – we have a tool as part of the suite called Resolve, which allows for in-depth analysis of specific machines (as well as the ability to compare to other machines/groups) and this will show straight away if a machine is being throttled, or has memory ballooning. Throttling can also show if a CPU is overheating and the BIOS throttles it back to avoid shutting down – many a place have thought they need new machines, or new CPUs, but no, they simply need to get those dusty fans cleaned out!

throttle

May show up a little bit too small for some screens, but what you’d see, is the CPU is throttled to 66%. The CPU usage is low, but due to the throttling, the Thread count and interrupt per seconds are high. The CPU should be 100% or even higher with some modern CPUs, but unless you’re really trying to save some power… You don’t want it lower than 100%

What’s also interesting, is when people go back to the older servers with Windows 7 on and realise that the poor performance throughout, was also due to the power management not being turned off… as a fair few manufacturers ship hardware with this as default…

Windows Storage Spaces

by in Storage Spaces, Uncategorized, Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 | Leave a comment

So I decided to build server 2016 about 3 months ago on a physical machine, seeing as though my other machines were Windows 10. I had a stack of hard drives and thought I’d use it for a storage server/NAS box. Then I decided to use it as a desktop machine. To cut a long story short, as much as 2016 works pretty well as a desktop, seeing as though it’s similar to W10, there were a few reasons that made me want to move back to W10.

But… I’d put in a few drives, set up storage spaces (it’s really easy) and as I was re-installing an OS (onto a different SSD as well), I cleared down everything on the drives and moved elsewhere, stupidly deleting some stuff that I thought I’d copied off in the midst, but doing so because I couldn’t find a straight answer whether the virtual drive I’d created within Storage Spaces, would carry to another OS. Most people said no. Most people were wrong.

Rebuilt with W10, lo and behold, my drives pop up, exactly the same, sans the files I’d deleted (Dammnit!).

So, moral of the story? Shifting from W10 to/from 2016 is probably going to keep your files, but I still probably wouldn’t risk it! 😉

Horizon View Client Install – Windows

by in Horizon View, Uncategorized, VMware, Windows 10, Windows 7 | Leave a comment

And now for something completely different.

I mean, now for the Horizon View Windows Install!

Download the Horizon View Client from the following site:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=CART17Q1_WIN_440&productId=578&rPId=15156

1win2win

Now, you may not want USB redirection (or it may not work) and also it’s environment dependent whether you want to Log in as current user.

win3

Enter your Default connection server

win4

Continuing on from if you chose to log in as current user

win5win6win7win8win9

Run the app, log in and go forth!

Outlook 2016 freezing when previewing Excel attachments (Windows 10)

by in Excel, Funny, Windows 10 | Leave a comment

Historically, I would have had this problem and resolved it via the following:

Me: Good morning end user who calls ten times a day, what’s the issue?

Them: There’s a problem with my system.

Me: … What part of the ‘system’?

Them: Email.

Me: You can’t send email, or…?

Them: Yeah, email system just isn’t working and hasn’t been for days

Me: Ok, well no-one has reported this, I’ll get one of the FIRST LINE guys to call you back, I’m making server magic here.

Them: No, I need it fixed now. I can’t work and haven’t been able to work for days!

Me: Ok, no worries. I’ll get one of the guys to come down right now.

And then forget about it, until the guy I sent down is having a panic attack and quite possibly may have been bodily harmed, so google it and get it fixed.

Now, I’ve had this issue for months. I go, oh, excel preview freezes! I hate excel! (and I do) and just save the attachment. Then I decided I’d had enough and googled it. Stupid Excel.

Dead easy – go into settings -> mouse and touchpad settings (or Type ‘Mouse’ or however you get there – I still get lost)  – Turn off ‘Scroll inactive windows when I hover over them’

Mouse

Aside from the creative license in my conversation – I genuinely had, on a regular, repeated basis from the same people, the same opener and continued insistence that the ‘System’ isn’t working for a multitude of different things… Along with, I can’t log in. It won’t let me login. It doesn’t like my password. Oh it’s turned on now I can log in.

Don’t get me started.