Hi everyone,
Recently being asked to install the new Microsoft Edge Enterprise ( https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/enterprise ) on the Citrix Session Servers in our Citrix farm, we have started doing a bit of research, knowing that standard Microsoft Edge is not available to install on a Windows Server environment.
First thing you come up with when researching online, are the community forums, which state that after a standard installation of the Microsoft Edge package, the application does not launch and causes very high CPU usage, rendering the server unusable – https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/404820-chromium-based-edge-browser-doesnt-launch-wvda-installed/ . This has also happened in our environment.
Following the thread, one of the community members has detailed what needs to be done, in his blog, here : https://jkindon.com/2019/09/17/deploying-brave-and-microsoft-edge-dev-browsers-in-citrix-cvad-environments/ . However, following the instructions and modifying the below to include the msedge.exe executable at the end was not enough:
Key: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\CtxUvi
Value Name: UviProcessExcludes
Type: REG_SZ
Value: badapp1.exe;badlongname.ex;badapp2.exe;msedge.exe;
Unfortunately, we noticed that the Citrix API hooks are still loading with the msedge.exe process – a simple guide on how to check this, using Process Explorer, is described step by step in the Citrix KB https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX221177 .
Even if the environment version we were installing this in was post-7.9, as mentioned in the Citrix KB, https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107825 , we were forced to disable the Citrix API hooks for the executable, using the methods described in pre-7.9 section, by adding the following keys (used only 64-bit section in our case):
For Windows 32-bit version
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook
Value Name: ExcludedImageNames
Type: REG_SZ
Value: badapp1.exe,badapp2.exe,badapp3.exe
For Windows 64-bit version
Keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\CtxHook
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\CtxHook
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Citrix\CtxHook64
Value Name: ExcludedImageNames
Type: REG_SZ
Value: badapp1.exe,badapp2.exe,badapp3.exe
Unfortunately, up to now, I am not sure if this is a version bug, or if this is how it is supposed to be, however this solved our problems and the Edge Browser is now working as expected.
