Unable to contact Citrix Server Browser

[triffe]

We have an old Metaframe 1.8 server that we are moving users off of this week and onto an XPe server. They are going to be connecting through a VPN and then to published apps. We have had the users doing last minute connection testing today. One of the users can connect through the VPN, but when she tries to connect to a published app, she gets this message: "Cannot connect to the Citrix server: Unable to contact the Citrix Server Browser. Either your network is not functional, or you need to configure an address under Server Location, or the configured address is incorrect."

She clicks okay on this message and then tries again to access the published app, and she is able to connect to the server w/o any errors.

She can close the publish app and reconnect to Citrix without errors as long as she does not close the VPN Dialer. If she closes the VPN dialer and relaunches it, she will get same error connecting to the published app on the first try, but she is then successful on the second try.

Has anyone run across this before?

 

[awayman]

This sounds like issues I've had with Name resolution (DNS) types of problems. Possibly, the first time she tries to connect, the VPN connection is having problems resolving the server/published app location. After the second try, the info is cached, so it works as long as the VPN connection remains active.

Or perhaps I'm completely wrong...

 

[triffe]

Thanks for the info, ajwayman. I guess I'm confused on what to do about it. If the VPN connection is having the problem as you described, what can I do to fix it? My knowledge is severely lacking in this area. What seems odd to me too is that I can't recreate the problem and as of yet, she is the only user experiencing it. Thanks in advance for the help!

 

[givenscj]

My guess is that because Citrix is so finky about latency, that the VPN client might be holding back the connection UNTIL there is traffic to send. If this is the case, it could be that the ICA client cannot see the citrix server the first time, but the second time, the VPN client has initiated the connection and everything is ready to go. You might try using a browser first and connecting to an internal address, then trying the citrix connection. A browser tends to be less picky when it comes to latency and will continue to try for a while until it reports an error, most likely more than enought time for the VPN to init.

Chris

 

[ghyde]

Gosh, dog-gone-IT this is getting frustrating!! ALL I WANT TO DO IS RUN WINDOWS (98) APPS ON MY MAC (10.2). Yet, no matter How Many articles I find on the topic (or winframe), they ALL filter down to running Citrix on 98 as a CLIENT. Ghod-oh-ghod, I want a Citrix SERVER on the PC, and the CLIENT on the Mac (which I have).

Why are there NO Direct resources for this question??

 

[bernies]

Citrix will not run as a server on Windows 98. It requires Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server(WTS) or Windows 2000 Server. What you probably want is a Windows emulator for Mac. There are a lot of these, and they are cheaper than licensing Citrix.