Citrix the Game Breaker
- Silvan Bauer
- Oct 14, 2022
- 3 min read
Ever had to use Citrix for work and you installed it on a computer on which you also play games on and then suddenly you got issues with Reshade not opening up in games or games crashing on startup because of Citrix? Well I did have these issues as well.
The reason for this blog post
So I had the problems described above as well after I installed Citrix Workspace on my gaming computer which I also use to connect to my work computer. After searching the internet I found ways which described how to fix these issues.
The most common recommendation to resolve the issue with Reshade (an application for adding post-processing effects to games to improve the graphics) was to uninstall the C++ Redestributables and then install the correct ones from Microsoft before installing Citrix. However for me it didn't work. I got rather frustrated since I couldn't use Reshade anymore on my gaming computer and wasn't able to find a way to fix it.
After tons of frustration and anger and wanting to uninstall Citrix (but obviously couldn't because I need it for work) I had found a way to resolve the Reshade issue. So I decided to write this blog post in case someone else had the same issues. Additionally since I had another issue with Citrix making a game crash at startup I decided to add this as well to this post.
Reshade Issue
The fix for Reshade was a rather hard one to find out since I didn't find a working way to resolve this issue on the Internet. So after tons of uninstalling and installing Citrix Workspace and C++ Redestributables I decided to disable every running Citrix service since I didn't see a reason why they had to run when I didn't even use Citrix during gaming. After I had disabled Citrix from autostart and all the Windows Services of Citrix and restarted the computer it finally worked. I was really happy when it worked since I finally could use Reshade again.
So what I exactly did was to go into the Task-Manager and disable all Citrix applications in the auto startup. And I also went to the Systemconfiguration to the services and disabled all services from Citrix Systems, Inc.
For every Citrix update I have to disable Citrix again. And once there was an update where one of the services wasn't there anymore when I looked for Citrix Systems, Inc. But Reshade was broken again. So I looked around in the services and found the service I was looking for but from Unknown. Disabling this service still made Reshade working again.
Services to disable:
Citrix Workspace Updater Service (not sure maybe it would work with this one enabled)
AppProtection Service (the one who breaks Reshade)
Startup issue
So a game failed to start-up and when I searched in the internet for a solution I found out that again it was the fault of Citrix. I got really angry at Citrix back then because it broke my games again even after disabling all services and auto-startups.
The solution I found on the web was to disable a certain device from Citrix in the Device Manager. However with a later Citrix update the device wasn't even on the system anymore and therefore the issue should not happen again.
Conclusion
Citrix sucks ;)
Ok, now seriously, I hope that I was able to help some of the readers with issues with Citrix.
And even with all the services disabled Citrix works fine but the app protection service is still an important part of Citrix. I think the service is still running when Citrix Workspace is started but since I can't be totally sure, I recommend, if someone needs the app protection service, to enable it before connecting to the work computer and disabling it and restarting the computer before setting up a game with reshade. Afterall once you have setup reshade in a game you probably won't need to touch the settings again so you won't need to disable the app protection service before every start of a game.
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