A few weeks ago I was presented with a very hard to find problem on a crashing Citrix Reciever. The user was presented with an error stating: “Citrix HDX Engine Stopped working”
Citrix HDX engine has stopped working
Assesment
After assessing the situation this error occurred in the issue was even stranger. The user open the production published desktop from home through a netscaler connection. From that desktop the experienced the problem when connecting to a publish desktop in the test environment. When I tried to replicate the issue in the office I could not replicate the receiver “Citrix HDX engine stopped working message”.
Main difference is that the user is home at presumably a Windows host and I was running a Thin Client. So I tried replicating this from an outside connection and hoorah the issue popped up. I then searched the eventviewer and found the following error:
Faulting application name: WFICA32.EXE, version: 14.4.1000.16, time stamp: 0x571e1d89 Faulting module name: vd3dn.dll, version: 14.4.1000.16, time stamp: 0x571e19a6 Exception code: 0x80000003 Fault offset: 0x00001021 Faulting process id: 0x57e8 Faulting application start time: 0x01d2398e3a3dda6d Faulting application path: C:\PROGRA~2\CITRIX\ICACLI~1\WFICA32.EXE Faulting module path: C:\PROGRA~2\CITRIX\ICACLI~1\vd3dn.dll Report Id: 7a821b57-a581-11e6-8122-bc305bf1fbe8 Faulting package full name:Research
After identifying the symptoms en having a clear view of the situation I went to Google to search for the error. What I found on “hdx engine stopped working” was lot and the following forum article stood out on the Citrix Support Forum. All the causes and solutions offered in this article were not the solution to my “Citrix HDX Engine Stopped working” error.
Final Solution to HDX engine stopped working
Then there was one course of action left, the always fun task of finding the needle in the haystack. After comparing policy settings, Receiver protocols (great articles by Bram Wolfs HDX) I found the difference; My production desktop was running Citrix VDA 7.6.300 and the test desktop VDA was running 7.8. In theory the VDA’s should be compatible and not cause issues, I did a downgrade of the test desktop VDA anyway. And you might have guessed it this completely solved the issue when connecting to a test desktop from the remote location.
My personal estimate is that there is a incompatibility when using a windows receiver on the endpoint and connecting to a VDA 7.6.300 and than trying to translate the new HDX protocols between the sessions. although I have no real explanation it is obvious that there is a bug here.
I enjoy reading through an article that can make people think.
Also, thank you for permitting me to comment!