"Checking Your Credentials" Error

[Guest Chris Thomas]

I am running Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 4.5 on a Windows 2003

Standard Edition Server SP2 with Terminal Services. The server is an HP

Proliant DL320 G5 with 3 GB of RAM and a Dual Core Xeon 2.66 GHz processor.

We do not publish applications on our Citrix server just a desktop. All

users use the Citrix Program Neighborhood client, version 10.100.55836. We

are experiencing a problem with this server that has been going on for nearly

a year now and we could really use some help.

 

The problem starts when a user calls the Help Desk and tells us that they

can't get into Citrix. We then attempt to connect as well as get the same

problem. You put in your user name and password, hit enter then you get

stuck at a message that says, "Checking Your Credentials". Anyone, no matter

if they are domain admin or regular user, receives the same message when they

log on. If we go to the server console and log on, we do not see that

message. We only see a blank gray desktop, with no icons and no mouse

pointer. Oddly enough, the users that were already logged on to the server

are able to kep working and not notice any issue. We have waited up to an

hour for something to happen at this point, but we eventually have to power

off the server with the power button and start it back up. Sometimes we can

go a couple of weeks without this happening and sometimes it'll happen a

couple times in one day. Once this problem starts, even using RDP to connect

to the server produces a blank desktop. It's not so bad if it happens

during the workday, but trips in to work on the weekend to reboot the server

are getting old.

 

There is nothing in my server logs that have provided any information about

the problem aside from the constant barrage of printer driver errors that

seem to happen on all Citrix servers. I have been watching the security logs

to see if the problem happens when any particular user logs on, but I have

not been able to see a pattern. We also replaced the older server that was

experiencing this same exact problem, with this new one. We didn't use an

image or anything so we were very surprised when it happened again.

 

I opened a ticket with Citrix about this problem but after trying a few

things that had no effect, they have concluded that it's a Windows/Active

Directory issue and have wished me luck. They recommended that I monitor

running processes on the server and when the lockups occur, I should check to

see if the handle count of any single process is more than 10,000. This

would then identify the problem. A day later when the server locked up

again, no process was using more than around 2,000 handles so it appears that

this is not our problem. I did notice that there was one particular process,

Outlook.exe, that belonged to our CEO. This was odd since he was not logged

on at the time. I tried to end the process manually but I was told Access

Denied. Two other users were also logged on at the time and they seemed to

be working OK, although the server would not accept any new connections.

 

I have seen several people all around the interwebs experiencing this

problem, but so far no solutions have been found for my issue. If anyone has

some information that might help me get this resolved, I would definitely

appreciate it. Thanks much. ---Chris

[Guest Chris Thomas]

RE: "Checking Your Credentials" Error

 

The lockup happened again last night and when I went to the server, I found

the same condition as last time. There were only 2 users loged on at the

time, but there was an outlook.exe process still listed that belonged to a

user that had logged off a few minutes earlier (A different user than

before). Again, I received "Access Denied" when I tried to kill the process.

 

Not sure why this single outlook.exe process is hanging like this. Should I

be posting this in the Outlook/Office group?

 

Thanks

 

 

"Chris Thomas" wrote:

> I am running Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 4.5 on a Windows 2003

> Standard Edition Server SP2 with Terminal Services. The server is an HP

> Proliant DL320 G5 with 3 GB of RAM and a Dual Core Xeon 2.66 GHz processor.

> We do not publish applications on our Citrix server just a desktop. All

> users use the Citrix Program Neighborhood client, version 10.100.55836. We

> are experiencing a problem with this server that has been going on for nearly

> a year now and we could really use some help.

>

> The problem starts when a user calls the Help Desk and tells us that they

> can't get into Citrix. We then attempt to connect as well as get the same

> problem. You put in your user name and password, hit enter then you get

> stuck at a message that says, "Checking Your Credentials". Anyone, no matter

> if they are domain admin or regular user, receives the same message when they

> log on. If we go to the server console and log on, we do not see that

> message. We only see a blank gray desktop, with no icons and no mouse

> pointer. Oddly enough, the users that were already logged on to the server

> are able to kep working and not notice any issue. We have waited up to an

> hour for something to happen at this point, but we eventually have to power

> off the server with the power button and start it back up. Sometimes we can

> go a couple of weeks without this happening and sometimes it'll happen a

> couple times in one day. Once this problem starts, even using RDP to connect

> to the server produces a blank desktop. It's not so bad if it happens

> during the workday, but trips in to work on the weekend to reboot the server

> are getting old.

>

> There is nothing in my server logs that have provided any information about

> the problem aside from the constant barrage of printer driver errors that

> seem to happen on all Citrix servers. I have been watching the security logs

> to see if the problem happens when any particular user logs on, but I have

> not been able to see a pattern. We also replaced the older server that was

> experiencing this same exact problem, with this new one. We didn't use an

> image or anything so we were very surprised when it happened again.

>

> I opened a ticket with Citrix about this problem but after trying a few

> things that had no effect, they have concluded that it's a Windows/Active

> Directory issue and have wished me luck. They recommended that I monitor

> running processes on the server and when the lockups occur, I should check to

> see if the handle count of any single process is more than 10,000. This

> would then identify the problem. A day later when the server locked up

> again, no process was using more than around 2,000 handles so it appears that

> this is not our problem. I did notice that there was one particular process,

> Outlook.exe, that belonged to our CEO. This was odd since he was not logged

> on at the time. I tried to end the process manually but I was told Access

> Denied. Two other users were also logged on at the time and they seemed to

> be working OK, although the server would not accept any new connections.

>

> I have seen several people all around the interwebs experiencing this

> problem, but so far no solutions have been found for my issue. If anyone has

> some information that might help me get this resolved, I would definitely

> appreciate it. Thanks much. ---Chris

[Guest J. Rowland]

RE: "Checking Your Credentials" Error

 

We have been experiencing the same problems with 5 separate Citrix farms,

different hardware, different levels of MSFT updates, the similarities are:

 

Office 2007, Citrix 4.5, and Trend A/V. What AV product are you using?

We've found that if we disable the Trend AV process that the problem doesn't

seem to occur, otherwise it happens nearly on a daily basis on some servers.

One thing we have found though is that orphaned Outlook process as a

tell-tale sign of the problem.

 

It is a pretty interesting freezing, it happens slowly, eventually

(sometimes after 20 minutes) nearly all sessions become unresponsive. We've

been troubleshooting this and have been a bit dispirited by the lack of

support we're receiving from these vendors.

 

--John C. Rowland

 

"Chris Thomas" wrote:

> The lockup happened again last night and when I went to the server, I found

> the same condition as last time. There were only 2 users loged on at the

> time, but there was an outlook.exe process still listed that belonged to a

> user that had logged off a few minutes earlier (A different user than

> before). Again, I received "Access Denied" when I tried to kill the process.

>

> Not sure why this single outlook.exe process is hanging like this. Should I

> be posting this in the Outlook/Office group?

>

> Thanks

>

>

> "Chris Thomas" wrote:

>

> > I am running Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 4.5 on a Windows 2003

> > Standard Edition Server SP2 with Terminal Services. The server is an HP

> > Proliant DL320 G5 with 3 GB of RAM and a Dual Core Xeon 2.66 GHz processor.

> > We do not publish applications on our Citrix server just a desktop. All

> > users use the Citrix Program Neighborhood client, version 10.100.55836. We

> > are experiencing a problem with this server that has been going on for nearly

> > a year now and we could really use some help.

> >

> > The problem starts when a user calls the Help Desk and tells us that they

> > can't get into Citrix. We then attempt to connect as well as get the same

> > problem. You put in your user name and password, hit enter then you get

> > stuck at a message that says, "Checking Your Credentials". Anyone, no matter

> > if they are domain admin or regular user, receives the same message when they

> > log on. If we go to the server console and log on, we do not see that

> > message. We only see a blank gray desktop, with no icons and no mouse

> > pointer. Oddly enough, the users that were already logged on to the server

> > are able to kep working and not notice any issue. We have waited up to an

> > hour for something to happen at this point, but we eventually have to power

> > off the server with the power button and start it back up. Sometimes we can

> > go a couple of weeks without this happening and sometimes it'll happen a

> > couple times in one day. Once this problem starts, even using RDP to connect

> > to the server produces a blank desktop. It's not so bad if it happens

> > during the workday, but trips in to work on the weekend to reboot the server

> > are getting old.

> >

> > There is nothing in my server logs that have provided any information about

> > the problem aside from the constant barrage of printer driver errors that

> > seem to happen on all Citrix servers. I have been watching the security logs

> > to see if the problem happens when any particular user logs on, but I have

> > not been able to see a pattern. We also replaced the older server that was

> > experiencing this same exact problem, with this new one. We didn't use an

> > image or anything so we were very surprised when it happened again.

> >

> > I opened a ticket with Citrix about this problem but after trying a few

> > things that had no effect, they have concluded that it's a Windows/Active

> > Directory issue and have wished me luck. They recommended that I monitor

> > running processes on the server and when the lockups occur, I should check to

> > see if the handle count of any single process is more than 10,000. This

> > would then identify the problem. A day later when the server locked up

> > again, no process was using more than around 2,000 handles so it appears that

> > this is not our problem. I did notice that there was one particular process,

> > Outlook.exe, that belonged to our CEO. This was odd since he was not logged

> > on at the time. I tried to end the process manually but I was told Access

> > Denied. Two other users were also logged on at the time and they seemed to

> > be working OK, although the server would not accept any new connections.

> >

> > I have seen several people all around the interwebs experiencing this

> > problem, but so far no solutions have been found for my issue. If anyone has

> > some information that might help me get this resolved, I would definitely

> > appreciate it. Thanks much. ---Chris

[Guest Chris Thomas]

RE: "Checking Your Credentials" Error

 

We are using Trend Server Protect on our Citrix server too. We only have a

single farm, but I too have narrowed the problem down to orphaned outlook.exe

processes. The funny thing is that the hanging process always belongs to one

of two different users. The one user had stopped using Citrix for a while

and our server was stable the entire time. The other just recently started

using it and doesn't really log on very often. Unfortunately, he's the CEO.

I have absolutely no idea what causes this outlook process to hang so I'm

currently just in a holding pattern waiting for it to fix itself. Ha. I

haven't tried disabling Trend Micro, but it sounds like that fixed it for

you. I think I may give that a shot.

 

Good to hear that someone else out there is having the same problem. With

all the internet searching I have been doing on this problem over the last

year or so, I haven't found anyone that knew anything about this. The only

vendor I have spoke to was Citrix and they charged me $400 even though they

were unable to identify the issue. Very frustrating.....

 

-Chris

 

"J. Rowland" wrote:

> We have been experiencing the same problems with 5 separate Citrix farms,

> different hardware, different levels of MSFT updates, the similarities are:

>

> Office 2007, Citrix 4.5, and Trend A/V. What AV product are you using?

> We've found that if we disable the Trend AV process that the problem doesn't

> seem to occur, otherwise it happens nearly on a daily basis on some servers.

> One thing we have found though is that orphaned Outlook process as a

> tell-tale sign of the problem.

>

> It is a pretty interesting freezing, it happens slowly, eventually

> (sometimes after 20 minutes) nearly all sessions become unresponsive. We've

> been troubleshooting this and have been a bit dispirited by the lack of

> support we're receiving from these vendors.

>

> --John C. Rowland

>

> "Chris Thomas" wrote:

>

> > The lockup happened again last night and when I went to the server, I found

> > the same condition as last time. There were only 2 users loged on at the

> > time, but there was an outlook.exe process still listed that belonged to a

> > user that had logged off a few minutes earlier (A different user than

> > before). Again, I received "Access Denied" when I tried to kill the process.

> >

> > Not sure why this single outlook.exe process is hanging like this. Should I

> > be posting this in the Outlook/Office group?

> >

> > Thanks

> >

> >

> > "Chris Thomas" wrote:

> >

> > > I am running Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 4.5 on a Windows 2003

> > > Standard Edition Server SP2 with Terminal Services. The server is an HP

> > > Proliant DL320 G5 with 3 GB of RAM and a Dual Core Xeon 2.66 GHz processor.

> > > We do not publish applications on our Citrix server just a desktop. All

> > > users use the Citrix Program Neighborhood client, version 10.100.55836. We

> > > are experiencing a problem with this server that has been going on for nearly

> > > a year now and we could really use some help.

> > >

> > > The problem starts when a user calls the Help Desk and tells us that they

> > > can't get into Citrix. We then attempt to connect as well as get the same

> > > problem. You put in your user name and password, hit enter then you get

> > > stuck at a message that says, "Checking Your Credentials". Anyone, no matter

> > > if they are domain admin or regular user, receives the same message when they

> > > log on. If we go to the server console and log on, we do not see that

> > > message. We only see a blank gray desktop, with no icons and no mouse

> > > pointer. Oddly enough, the users that were already logged on to the server

> > > are able to kep working and not notice any issue. We have waited up to an

> > > hour for something to happen at this point, but we eventually have to power

> > > off the server with the power button and start it back up. Sometimes we can

> > > go a couple of weeks without this happening and sometimes it'll happen a

> > > couple times in one day. Once this problem starts, even using RDP to connect

> > > to the server produces a blank desktop. It's not so bad if it happens

> > > during the workday, but trips in to work on the weekend to reboot the server

> > > are getting old.

> > >

> > > There is nothing in my server logs that have provided any information about

> > > the problem aside from the constant barrage of printer driver errors that

> > > seem to happen on all Citrix servers. I have been watching the security logs

> > > to see if the problem happens when any particular user logs on, but I have

> > > not been able to see a pattern. We also replaced the older server that was

> > > experiencing this same exact problem, with this new one. We didn't use an

> > > image or anything so we were very surprised when it happened again.

> > >

> > > I opened a ticket with Citrix about this problem but after trying a few

> > > things that had no effect, they have concluded that it's a Windows/Active

> > > Directory issue and have wished me luck. They recommended that I monitor

> > > running processes on the server and when the lockups occur, I should check to

> > > see if the handle count of any single process is more than 10,000. This

> > > would then identify the problem. A day later when the server locked up

> > > again, no process was using more than around 2,000 handles so it appears that

> > > this is not our problem. I did notice that there was one particular process,

> > > Outlook.exe, that belonged to our CEO. This was odd since he was not logged

> > > on at the time. I tried to end the process manually but I was told Access

> > > Denied. Two other users were also logged on at the time and they seemed to

> > > be working OK, although the server would not accept any new connections.

> > >

> > > I have seen several people all around the interwebs experiencing this

> > > problem, but so far no solutions have been found for my issue. If anyone has

> > > some information that might help me get this resolved, I would definitely

> > > appreciate it. Thanks much. ---Chris

[Guest J. Rowland]

RE: "Checking Your Credentials" Error

 

Chris--

 

We're running:

Running Trend ServerProtect

Pattern vers: 5.531.00

Engine vers: 8910-1002

Program vers: 5.70.0.1078

 

The problem started arising for us a couple of months ago. First it was

just one server and it happened about once a month. Then it started

happening to more farms and reached a crescendo over the last 3 weeks. It

was happening to freshly built physical servers, virtual servers, all running

Citrix 4.5, Office 2007, Trend, CA, Windows 2003, and 32-bit and 64-bit

platforms. As usual, the vendors point fingers at one another. Eliminated

virtual servers and 32-bit v. 64-bit quickly then CA Arcserv was removed from

the list.

 

We patched everything, Citrix blows it off as a Microsoft problem. We

haven't tried Microsoft because the usual pattern we've encountered with

issues like this is some first tier guy in India holds the ticket for a week

and doesn't understand that 25 people are logged into the server and that

tearing Citrix out of the picture poses a problem.

 

Trend had us uninstall Trend, tear out the stuff in the registry, and

re-install. That was a waste of time. We've turned of Trend for a couple of

days on all but one server, that server continues to have the problem every

day. It does seem associated with just a handful of Outlook users and

involves Outlook processes that are impossible to kill.

 

We have servers running Citrix 4.5 Outlook 2003 and Trend which are not

impacted.

 

Let me know how things go on your end. I think you should start talking to

Trend Micro technical support.

 

Thanks for the update!

 

--John C. Rowland

 

"Chris Thomas" wrote:

> We are using Trend Server Protect on our Citrix server too. We only have a

> single farm, but I too have narrowed the problem down to orphaned outlook.exe

> processes. The funny thing is that the hanging process always belongs to one

> of two different users. The one user had stopped using Citrix for a while

> and our server was stable the entire time. The other just recently started

> using it and doesn't really log on very often. Unfortunately, he's the CEO.

> I have absolutely no idea what causes this outlook process to hang so I'm

> currently just in a holding pattern waiting for it to fix itself. Ha. I

> haven't tried disabling Trend Micro, but it sounds like that fixed it for

> you. I think I may give that a shot.

>

> Good to hear that someone else out there is having the same problem. With

> all the internet searching I have been doing on this problem over the last

> year or so, I haven't found anyone that knew anything about this. The only

> vendor I have spoke to was Citrix and they charged me $400 even though they

> were unable to identify the issue. Very frustrating.....

>

> -Chris

>

[Guest mike neary]

re:Checking Your Credentials" Error

 

re:Checking Your Credentials" Error

 

You might want to try installing UPHCLEAN on the affected servers to see if that can unload processes and the user's profile from the server when the user logs off. Just go to Microsoft's site and search for UPHCLEAN.

[Guest jim maurer]

Same issue

 

Same issue

 

I've had the same problem with one Win 2003R2 SP2 server with Citrix 4.0. Usually happens once a month and takes 5 minutes for the user to login from an HP thin client, but today it takes about 20 minutes.

Outlook doesnt seem to be the issue.

Trend is unloaded, but still installed.

Funny thing is other servers have been imaged from this server, but they dont have the problem.

I've watched Process Explorer, Regmon and Filemon, but none seem to show anything of value.

Perhaps I'll reimage.