During the past weeks I have spend a bit of time with Citrix XenDesktop 5 and while I was busy creating Desktop Groups, updating Master images, I thought i t could be helpful to see some information directly on the desktop. Show things on the desktop?, okay that’s a no-brainer, BGInfo from Sysinternals is what we need.
So I created a template for BGInfo that just shows the information I need when using XenDesktop.
- The user that’s logged on
- The domain the user is logged on
- The IP Address
- The Boot Time of the system
- The XenDesktop group the VM belongs to
- The Citrix Farm name
- The version of the master image
To avoid any (none) IP Address entries, I used the trick as explained by John Baker here To obtain information about the XenDesktop Group and Citrix Farm I let BGInfo query the following registry keys:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\State\DesktopGroupName
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Citrix\VirtualDesktopAgent\State\FarmName
and for the Image version, I query a custom registry key I have stored in the master image to define the image version.
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\FooCorp\ImageVersion
The BGInfo template can be downloaded from here
Deployment of the BGInfo utility and the automatic startup can be configured through Group Policy. For my environment where I already have a GPO called VDI_Desktop_Pooled and VDI_Desktop_Personal I added the following configuration.
Under Computer Configuration, Preferences I have configured a GP Preference to copy bginfo.exe and the bginfo template to the c:\program files\bginfo folder.
Then under Computer Configuration, Policies, Administrative Templates, System, Group Policy I have enabled Group Policy loopback processing mode, this to ensure that the next Preferences setting that I have configured under User Configuration applies correctly.
Under User Configuration, Preferences, Windows Settings, Registry I added the following configuration:
| Hive | HKEY_CURRENT_USER |
| Key Path | Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run |
| Value Name | BGINFOVDI |
| Value Type | REG_SZ |
| Value Data | "C:\Program Files\BGINFO\BGINFO.EXE" "C:\Program Files\BGINFO\VDI_BGINFO.bgi" /timer:0 /silent /nolicprompt |
That’s it, Enjoy