Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops

Collect a Citrix Diagnostic Facility (CDF) trace at system startup

The CDFControl utility is an event tracing controller or consumer for capturing Citrix Diagnostic Facility (CDF) trace messages displayed from various Citrix tracing providers. It is made to troubleshoot complex Citrix related issues, parse filter support, and collect performance data. To download the CDFControl utility, see CTX111961.

Use the Local System account

To use the Local System account for the CDF COM server service, complete the following steps:

  1. Click Run from the Start menu.
  2. Type services.msc in the dialog box and click OK.
  3. Select the Citrix Diagnostics Facility COM Server service and choose Properties.
  4. Click the Log On tab and enable the Local System account. Then click OK. CDF properties
  5. Restart the service.

Collect a trace at system startup

To collect a CDF trace at system startup, refer to the procedure:

  1. Start CDFControl and select Options from the Tools menu.
  2. Specify the trace file path in the Startup trace file path for capturing startup trace section. Then click Save. Startup trace file path
  3. Select the Trace Categories as recommended by Citrix Technical Support. In this example, Citrix Policies is selected.

    The Citrix Policies selection below is shown only as an example of startup tracing. We recommend that you enable the providers for the specific issue you are troubleshooting.

    Citrix Policies example

  4. With administrator privileges, select Startup Tracing and click Enable from the Tools menu.

    After selecting Enable, the animated bar starts scrolling. This does not affect the procedure. Continue to Step 5.

  5. Close the CDFControl utility and restart the system after the Startup Tracing is enabled.
  6. Start the CDFControl utility. After the system restarts and the error appears, disable the Startup Tracing option by selecting Disable.

    Disable the Startup Tracing option by selecting Startup Tracing from the Tools menu and clicking Disable as described in Steps 4 and 5.

  7. Stop the Citrix Diagnostics Facility COM server service.
  8. Collect the trace log file (.etl) for analysis in the specified file path by following the Steps 1 and 2.
  9. Start the Citrix Diagnostics Facility COM server service.
Collect a Citrix Diagnostic Facility (CDF) trace at system startup