Frequent permanent freezing of Windows 10 while using Citrix Workspace
I have recently rebuilt my PC with the following specifications, but am seeing frequent freezing requiring a hard reset. I have been investigating for quite some time but not able to pinpoint the root cause.
- AMD Ryzen 3600
- MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX
- Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200
- Asus GeForce GT710
- Corsair PSU CX550M
- Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB
- Windows 10 Professional
I have updated everything to the latest – BIOS, chipset, drivers etc. And there are no issues with any hardware overheating.
I originally had a friend's MSI GeForce GTX 970 4 GB Video Card and suspected there was a hardware problem and when I swapped it for the GT710 it appeared to resolve the issue for a while. (See Citrix Workspace crashing - Windows 10 GeForce GTX 970)
I use my PC to use Citrix to connect to work remotely and I typically see the issue when on Citrix or when switching between my host PC and the Citrix session (running in full screen mode).
However I have been seeing my PC freeze again in increasing frequency – maybe once per day. The interesting thing is that I have Zoom running on my host PC and my PC crashed today when in my Citrix session. However, Zoom was still working (I could hear people and they could hear me), which was a bit weird, but I couldn't press any key or do anything. I don't get a BSOD or anything.
The biggest problem I have is that I have no idea what is causing it. I don't see anything in Event Viewer.
When I rebuilt my PC I used my existing HDDs to store my data but the OS is on a new SSD. Just today I have disconnected absolutely everything from my PC so that the new CPU, GPU, RAM, motherboard, SSD and PSU are the only things left. It is also a brand new Windows 10 clean reinstall. Doing this should hopefully rule in or out a HDD issue on my old HDDs (probably upwards of five years old).
I appreciate this is a bit of a weird problem but would appreciate some help with the following:
- Can I identify a problem with my HDDs which could be causing this?
- Other than Event Viewer, where else could I try and find some crash logs?
- Could I run Citrix in a virtual machine to avoid it crashing my host PC (it would only crash the VM) or is it likely the root cause would take down the host PC also?
- Is this more likely a hardware or software issue?
- Is it possibly AHCI Power Management issue?
Do you know what version of Citrix is being used at the server? Citrix Workspaces doesn't work very well with older version of Citrix that used to use Citrix Receiver. You should only use the version of Receiver/Workspaces that is officially supported by the Citrix Server you are connecting to. If it is the latest version of Citrix on the server, and Workspaces is still causing you grief, you should be able to fallback to HTML5 using your web browser. You can also try downloading the Citrix cleanup utility to completely remove it from your PC then try downloading the Workspaces App from Windows Store. Make sure Windows is installed version 1909.