App-V: Why would new users on RDS/Terminal Servers not get any App-V Applications?

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App-V: Why would new users on RDS/Terminal Servers not get any App-V Applications?

I recently came across a situation where a customer was in a panic because newly provisioned users were unable to receive any applications on their RDS Servers. Existing users were actually able to launch applications just fine and they appeared to be pre-cached properly. The scenario always seem to be tied to specific users as all of the users leveraged roaming profiles to maintain consistency across the farm.

The first thing to always do in this situation is verify connectivity to the App-V management server. This was quickly done. In addition verification of user group/provider policy configuration was also very quick as all users were part of the same global group tied to the server’s provider policy.

The next test quickly confirmed the issue. From both a user experiencing this issue and a user not experiencing this issue, a simple SFTTRAY /refreshall was performed and it was quickly revealed that the RDS servers running the App-V client had been specifically placed in offline mode.

The Virtual Application Client could not refresh your publishing information.

The Application Virtualization Client is operating in offline mode and cannot perform the operation requested. Disable offline mode, ensure that you have a network connection, and then retry the operation. If the problem persists, report the following error code to your System Administrator.

Error Code: 4615186-19101601-0003100F

The interesting aspect is this was done only after the first batch of users had logged on and initially refreshed against the server. Then the “Online” value beneath the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\SoftGrid\4.5\Client\Network
Was set to 0. Setting the key back to 1 allowed the new users to refresh and get applications upon login.

The administrator wanted to “cut down on excessive traffic” as he had read on a web site where this would be a good trick. As you can see from the example above, there are ramifications of doing this. In addition, this is the exact reason Microsoft offers Stand-alone mode as an option.