Some equations are hard, some equations are easy. I’ve never been the fan of complex equations and have always preferred to keep things simple (and also was never good at math). But today, I would like to share with you our equation for Optimizer success:
New build of Windows = new template for Citrix Optimizer.
With the recent release of Windows 10 build 1803, it is time to present you with new version of Citrix Optimizer 1.2. Without further delay, let’s talk about new features in this version.
Windows 10 build 1803 template
The new template has been added and tested. This template was not updated based only on a new list of services, scheduled tasks, and built-in applications, but we’ve started adding more general optimizations. Most notably, we now automatically switch the power mode to “High Performance” and run NGEN for both 32- and 64-bit assemblies. We are planning to extend them to other operating systems in the next release, but wanted to make sure that we released 1803 template as soon as was possible.
A few important notes:
- NOTE 1: NGEN takes more time than other optimizations and it is normal for it to take 10 minutes or more. We’ve decided to run it in two parts (32 bit and 64-bit items are separate) to provide more responsive UI. Be patient, good things take time.Also, with NGEN we cannot really support analyze or rollback modes, so these optimizations are simply skipped if you use these two modes. There are no known side effects (aside from improved performance) from running NGEN and it is completely safe to run it.
- NOTE 2: There are sometimes problems with the removal of built-in applications in Windows 10 build 1803. Certain applications will fail and if you review the output XML file for details, you will see “unknown error” or a similar message. While the cause is still unknown, it’s probably some process still running in the background, as this has been mostly seen on newly built images.If you encounter this issue, I would recommend waiting for a cool-down (go for lunch or dinner and just leave the VM running) and try to remove them again after reboot. During beta testing, we had a 100% success rate with this approach.
Removal of “Network Location Awareness” and “Network List Service” optimizations from all templates
During early beta testing of the first version of Citrix Optimizer, we ran into a few issues when these two services were disabled, as some third-party applications had dependency on this service. Instead of completely removing them from optimization templates, we decided to keep them in the “Optional” group and keep them unchecked by default.
However, even with these precautions, there were many people that tried to apply these optimizations and ran into issues later. We decided to completely remove these optimizations in the newest release (you can always create your own templates and modify ours for your own need if you really want to disable these services).
Stability, bug fixed and miscellaneous…
Finally, we have also done some improvements to the tool itself by making a lot of small changes under the hood. Underlying PowerShell engine is now better at handling errors and reporting problems and few minor issues were fixed in user interface as well.
That’s all, folks. Let us know in comments if you are a happy user of Citrix Optimizer — and if your experience has not been so great, your feedback (using comments or our form) is even more important to us!
Thanks for your support,
Martin and Manoj
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