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 intended 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

Use the following procedure to collect a CDF trace at system startup. You need administrator privileges.

  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 recommended by Citrix Support. (In the following example, Citrix Policies is selected. That selection is only an example. We recommend that you enable the providers for the specific issue you are troubleshooting.)

    Citrix Policies example

  4. Select Startup Tracing and select Enable from the Tools menu.

    After selecting Enable, the animated bar starts scrolling. This activity does not affect the procedure. Continue to the next step.

  5. After the Startup Tracing is enabled, close the CDFControl utility and restart the system.
  6. Start the CDFControl utility. After the system restarts and the error appears, disable startup tracing by selecting Startup Tracing from the Tools menu, and clicking Disable.
  7. Stop the Citrix Diagnostics Facility COM server service.
  8. Go to the trace file path specified in step 2 and collect the trace log file (.etl) for analysis.
  9. Start the Citrix Diagnostics Facility COM server service.
Collect a Citrix Diagnostic Facility (CDF) trace at system startup