Forum Discussion
CTFMON hard errors when combining RemoteApp & Remote Desktop
Hello,
New to AVD, experimenting with a fairly plain vanilla setup.
Setup:
- Windows 11 23H2 multi session.
- Custom image with all optimizations, time zone redirect, most Appx packages removed, Updates installed.
- Entra ID SSO.
- Only one host.
- Using the Windows Remote Desktop client.
Reproducible error:
- Start a remote desktop session, all is well.
- Log off
- Start a RemoteApp that uses the same host (since there is only one)
- Works fine, close app
- Launch new Remote desktop session
- CTFMON.EXE Hard Error before the desktop ever appears. Click OK, it keeps coming up. Can't proceed.
Restarting the host clears the problem. I've reproduced this several times.
Going to try without optimizations, but was wondering if anyone has a clue as to what might be going on here, as Google is completely quiet on the topic, so this seems ot be a "me" thing, but ... I'm not doing anything "special" at all ...
Thoguhts?
Thanks!
- Ah, never mind, it appears that combining RemoteApp and Desktop in the same host pool for the same user is not supported.
See here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-desktop/terminology#app-groups
We don't support assigning both the RemoteApp and desktop application groups in a single host pool to the same user. Doing so will cause a single user to have two user sessions in a single host pool. Users aren't supposed to have two active user sessions at the same time, as this can cause the following things to happen:
The session hosts become overloaded
Users get stuck when trying to login
Connections won't work
The screen turns black
The application crashes
Other negative effects on end-user experience and session performancejfdoyon that is interesting! We appear to be having pretty much the same symptoms, but without the desktop involved. Win 11 23H2 as well using Entra SSO. Single host with one published app. Most users are fine but one account gets to "Preparing Windows" and then changes to a permanent black screen, and that is a local admin account. The first logon for all users takes about 5 minutes and pauses at the same place (which may be OneDrive so we are removing that as a first step). We do have a desktop published to the same host, but only for our test user account to use if/when needed. Ctfmon.exe and the Search service are constantly logged for crashing. Did your problems go away when you removed the desktop?
- You could possibly have better luck with this, if it was really needed, by setting in the Remote Desktop group policy to log sessions off when they are disconnected and restricting users to a single session as to avoid conflicts between user session types.
