A list containing the majority of Citrix Machine Creation Services support articles collated to make this page a one stop place for you to search for and find information regarding any issues you have with the product and its related dependencies.
The page is updated daily with new support articles and information. Articles will change from time and if information here is outdated or incorrect please let me know using the comments. Links may also expire or change so if you find broken links, please again let me know. For each issue, known product versions affected are recorded however that does not mean product versions that aren’t listed are not affected.
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Machine Creation Services:
| wdt_ID | Brief Description of Issue | Brief Description of Fix | Applicable Product Versions Affected (if known) | Link to supplemental Support Article(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Machines provisioned by MCS are prompting for a restart on every boot. | The machines had been configured with a VMware Paravirtualization SCSI controller type. Changing the SCSI Controller on the Master MCS Image to LSI Logic SAS fixes the issue. | XenApp and XenDesktop 7.14. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX226475 |
| 2 | VDA machines may show as "Stuck on Boot" within Citrix Studio and appear under the "Registration Missing" tab in the Delivery Group's details tab even though they are registered and serving users. | This issue affects VDAs hosted on Nutanix Acropolis and has been fixed in XenApp and XenDesktop 7.14.1. | XenApp and XenDesktop 7.9 to 7.13. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX225850 |
| 3 | After updating an MCS Machine Catalog, new applications and/or updates are unavailable to the VDAs after they have been rebooted. The power state of each VDA also appears as "Unknown". | Run a "Get-BrokerHypervisorConnection" and look for the Delivery Controller which reports "State: Unavailable". For the affected Delivery Controller, restart the Citrix Broker Service. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX225293 | |
| 4 | When creating a Machine Catalog you receive error "XDDS:4A5116C7". | Free up resources on the vSphere datastore associated with your hosting connection. If that does not work, remove the resource from Studio and add it back. | Citrix XenDesktop 7.6. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX201776 |
| 5 | Machines do not register and policies do not apply after DST changes are implemented. | This happens when the Kerberos handshake fails due to Group Policy client loading before the Windows Time service. Log on to the master MCS virtual machine, run "w32tm /resync /nowait" and then update the Machine Catalog. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX218718 | |
| 6 | Machine creation via MCS failed with error "Error ID: XDDS:0DAA3833: An error occured while preparing an image". | As a result of Microsoft Security Bulletin "MS16-065" changes have been made to .NET Framework which cause incompatibilities with some applications that are based on .NET. As a workaround, refer to the Microsoft documentation as linked in the CTX article. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX221448 | |
| 7 | Virtual Machines created on XenServer by MCS in XenDesktop 7.12 report missing XenTools, XenDrivers and the network adapter on the VMs shows as a "Realtek" adapter instead of the Xen adapter. | Upgrade to XenDesktop 7.14. If that is not possible, contact Citrix Support for a private fix. | Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop 7.12. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX220053 |
| 8 | When using MCS I/O Optimisation for a catalog containing 32-bit VMs with a RAM cache greater than 256MB can cause the Operating System to stop. | To prevent this, configure less RAM cache. This is also resolved in XenApp and XenDesktop 7.14. | ||
| 9 | Machines created via MCS and configured with a RAM Cache and HDD overflow disk will not boot and the machines freeze at the Windows logo. | Change the "TargetCacheSize" DWORD value from "32" to "256" under "HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CtxMcsWbc" on your master image and update the Machine Catalog. | Citrix XenDesktop 7.12. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX220740 |
| 10 | When selecting a Master Image during Machine Catalog creation you receive error "You must select a disk image with at least one network card", | This can happen if you have a VM imported from a previous version of XenServer into a higher version. Create a diskless VM but do not start it. Detach the disk associated to the problematic VM and attach it to the newly created diskless VM. Create a Machine Catalog using this VM as the template. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX222490 | |
| 11 | When creating machnies using MCS on Hyper-V you receive error "HResult: 0x80070005 (E_AccessDenied) WMI Access Denied". | On each Hyper-V server, remove and add the administrator account back to the Local Administrators group. This issue could also be due to Anti-Virus, Firewalls, WMI/DCOM permissions and more as explained in the CTX article. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX215668 | |
| 12 | VMware virtual machines created via MCS contain ghost NICs. | You can remove these via Device Manager on the master image or potentially power on the master virtual machine to remove the NIC, power the machine off and then add a new NIC. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX219905 | |
| 13 | After installing the WEM image on the Master VM, you cannot update the Machine Catalog with the new image via MCS. Error "Image Preparation did not complete. Status 'Not Set'" is shown. | Upgrade to XenDesktop 7.14. | Citrix XenDesktop 7.13. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX228003 |
| 14 | After created a new MCS Catalog Update, the VMs do not use the new image. | Make sure that the desktops VMs were restarted using Studio, which is a requirement for those machines to receive the new image. The power action has to originate from Studio. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX229699 | |
| 15 | After deleting a couple of MCS provisioned machines, when adding new machines to an existing Machine Catalog, the new machine names are not in proper order. | Run command "Set-AcctIdentityPool -IdentityPoolName PoolName -StartCount 1 -NamingScheme TEST##" where "PoolName" refers to the Machine Catalog name and "TEST##" refers to the Machine Catalog naming scheme. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX231198 | |
| 16 | After a Machine Catalog update, some or all machines in the Catalog do not perform the reboot required to receive the updated image. | The affected machined were not part of any Delivery Group which is required for the reboot process. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX231397 | |
| 17 | When adding storage from vCenter to Studio under "Hosting" you receive error "Unable to find any shared storage" when you instruct Studio to search for shared storage. | This can happen if the host you are searching storage on does not share datastores with other hosts in the cluster(s) that exist under vCenter. In this case, if storage is only available to one host, instruct Studio to "Use storage local to the hypervisor". | ||
| 18 | When creating a new Machine Catalog you are presented with error "ProvisioningTaskError", "FailedToCreatePreparationVm" and "The given key was not present in the dictionary". | You have to provide the service account being used for the XenDesktop Hosting Connection with adequate permissions. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX231864 | |
| 19 | VDAs created by MCS lose registration with Delivery Controllers and you may see Event Log ID 1023 "The Citrix Desktop Service was refused a connection to the delivery controller". | This is caused by files taking up disk space on the Identity disk. Follow the steps included in the CTX article to access the Identity Disk volume and check which files are taking up disk space. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX232143 | |
| 20 | VDAs do not come up automatically after an MCS machine update when machines are hosted on Nutanix on a large environment. The "Rollout Strategy" was set to "Immediately" and the Nutanix Hosting Connection was set to "50 new actions per miinute". | From CDF traces Citrix found that the Nutanix plugin was unable to offer bulk power state updates, and there was a huge delay in carrying out power operations. Nutanix provided a new Hypervisor AOS 5.1.2 which has scalability enhancements to address this issue. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX233530 | |
| 21 | MCS I/O performance is poor. | A public fix is being released by Citrix which resolves the performance issues. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/395312-xd-mcs-io-is-crazy-slow/ | |
| 22 | Machines created with MCS might aquire duplicate SCCM GUIDs. The SCCM console displays only one virtual machine. | On the master image, make sure the "SMS Agent Host" service Startup Type is set to "Automatic (Delayed Start)". | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX236683 | |
| 23 | Machines created via MCS freeze during peak hours. New users cannot access hosted applications or desktops and existing users see a "No available resource message" when trying to reconnect. | Citrix are investigating. Redeploy the Machine Catalog without the MCS I/O feature enabled. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX234814 | |
| 24 | When creating a new Machine Catalog you receive error "Logging error. Contact Citrix Support". Clicking on the "View Details" button shows error "XDDS:CA90918F". | Citrix are working on a fix for this issue. As a workaround, select "Prevent changes to the site configuration when the database is not available" under "Logging -> Preferences" in Citrix Studio. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX236971 | |
| 25 | After logging on to a VDA deployed via MCS with MCS I/O enabled, machines blue screen with error "0x0000007E". | In this case, the extra drive to be used for write cache was not created. Create the Machine Catalog again and make sure the "Disk cache size" and "Memory allocated to cache" fields are populated if you want to use MCS I/O. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX237395 | |
| 26 | Server VDAs blue screen with error "SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED (CtxMcsWbc.sys)". | This happens when no write back cache disk was found on the machine, so data could not be written to the hard disk and a BSOD was encountered. Check the VMs to see if they have an extra unformatted disk in Disk Management. If there is none, the Machine Catalog needs recreated. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX237557 | |
| 27 | When updating a Machine Catalog you receive error "A problem was detected during the Write Back Cache compatibility check. The issue was: The Write Back Cache driver was not found". | A reinstall of the VDA and checking the option to install the MCSIO driver solved the issue. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/398395-machine-catalog-failing-to-update/ | |
| 28 | Machine Catalog creation fails with a red exclamation mark and clicking on the empty Machine Catalog shows error "There are no master images associated with this Machine Catalog". | When installing the VDA, the "Citrix Machine Identity Service" component was unselected, so the MCSIO drivers were not installed on the image. | ||
| 29 | After several days of VDA uptime, the VDAs freeze and show as unregistered in Studio. | The temporary cache disk has run out of space. It should ideally be sized to at least the free space of the machine plus the page file. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX241136 | |
| 30 | Machine Catalog creation fails due to the failure of the Office rearm step. | If there is no requirement to activate Office within the gold image for example if you intend to use user-based licensing, you can disable the Office rearm step by running command "Set-ProvServiceConfigurationData -Name ImageManagementPrep_Excluded_Steps -Value OsRearm". | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX233683 | |
| 31 | When deleting a Machine Catalog you receive error "The provisioning task is already running on the Machine Catalog". | Running command "Get-ProvTask -Active $true | Stop-ProvTask" solved it. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/401132-cant-delete-vm-from-mcs/ | |
| 32 | The Secure Boot option is dropped for new machines created on vSphere. | This is expected behaviour. Secure Boot is only supported when using a Hyper-V 2016 virtual machine that has Secure Boot enabled and that uses the Microsoft UEFI Certificate Authority template. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX236565 | |
| 33 | After upgrading to vSphere 6.7, machines cannot be added to Machine Catalogs. A Resource Testing report from Studio shows error "storage could not be read from the data store". | Spaces in the datastore names were classed as special characters and had to be removed to resolve this issue. | VMware vSphere 6.7. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/401640-mcs-broken-after-vsphere-67-update/ |
| 34 | Old base disks are not cleaned up as it appears that the "DisusedImageCleanUp" tasks are not created. | Rebooting the Delivery Controllers solved the issue. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/401743-mcs-clean-up-for-base-disks-not-running/ | |
| 35 | When creating a new Catalog and using SCVMM 2016, error "Image Preparation Finalization failed" appears. | Running and command "Set-ProvServiceConfigurationData -Name ImageManagementPrep_Excluded_Steps -Value EnableDHCP" allowed the Catalog to be created. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/402231-xd-1811-windows-server-2019-mcs-image-preparation-failing/ | |
| 36 | When creating a new or updating existing Catalog, no virtual machines or snapshots are available for selection. | The virtual machine was in a "vApp" group in vSphere. | https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX255925 | |
| 37 | When creating a new Machine Catalog with Azure as a resource location, no Master Image appears in the list to choose from. | Changing the gold virtual machine hard drive from "Standard SSD" to "Standard HDD" solved the problem. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/398453-cannot-see-vhds-in-azure-resource-group-with-mcs/ | |
| 38 | Machine Catalog update fails with error "FailedToStartImagePreparationVM: URGENT". | Available RAM was low on one XenServer host, even though the preparation virtual machine was not created on that host. Freeing up memory solved the problem. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/403376-xendesktop715-ltsr2-cataluogue-fails-updating-with-errorid-failedtostartimagepreparationvm-urgent/ | |
| 39 | After cloning a virtual machine, reinstalling the VDA and running Sysprep, the computer name reverts back to the old name that was set prior to Sysprep. | A MCS provisioned machine was cloned, rather than the master virtual machine. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/403813-installing-the-vda-software-on-a-cloned-vm-server-with-sysprep-applied-causes-server-to-revert-back-to-pre-sysprep-name/ | |
| 40 | After an SCVMM upgrade from 2016 to 2019, Machine Catalogs cannot be updated and the error "VMM failed to allocate a MAC address to network adapter" is displayed. | SCVMM 2019 is not yet supported with Machine Creation Services. MCS is using its own MAC address range instead of letting SCVMM decide, which is the problem. Support for SCVMM 2019 is expected in Q1 2020. | Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. | https://discussions.citrix.com/topic/403104-anyone-using-mcs-and-scvmm-2019-mac-pool-issues/ |
| 41 | When creating a new Catalog you receive error "ImagePreparationFinalizationFailed" and "Image preparation step 'EnableDHCP' failed". | This issue occurred when attempting to deploy v5 series machines to an Azure Resource Location. Deploying v4 series machines in Azure was the workaround | ||
| 42 | A machine catalog fails to create using Citrix Hypervisor with error "MC_CreateMachineCatalogInitialzation". | IntelliCache was enabled on the Citrix Hypervisor Hosting connection but the underlying shared storage (SR) was GFS2 which does not support IntelliCache. |