Bginfo Xendesktop

BGInfo Template for XenDesktop 5

Posted by Alex Verboon on Sunday, May 22, 2011

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

    2011-05-22 23h58_18

    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.

    2011-05-23 00h26_53

    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.

    2011-05-23 00h33_41

    Under User Configuration, Preferences, Windows Settings, Registry I added the following configuration:

    2011-05-23 00h37_35

            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
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