Monthly Archives: January 2013

Announcing SBC Printers, A simple printers interface for XenApp / VDI

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A little irk of mine with Windows 7 and server 2008 R2 was the Devices and Printers interface. This mix of peripherals is fine for standard desktops, but in SBC / VDI the devices list generally contained items you didn’t want users seeing, or ejecting for that matter!

default interface

Not happy with the Irk, and still on my app developing buzz, i decided to write SBC Printers:

default

SBC-Printers is a simple little .net 4 application, leveraging WMI for printer enumeration and control.Because SBC Printers is an executable, it can published as a XenApp application. Sbc Printers can also be installed as the default printers interface on the start menu:

start menu

So really your users won’t know the difference or care for that matter!

SBC-Printers also comes with securable options for adding or deleting local printers:

add

delete

The display of add or delete can be controlled via the settings file in the installation directory:

settings file

Installation:

  1. Download the following MSI
  2. Install the MSI to the default directory.

To restrict the standard printers dialog from users, but leaving it accessible to administrators:

  • Browse to c:program files (x86)SBC-Printersbin

powershell

  • run the powershell script below, make sure to run it as an administrator!

That’s it, once the Powershell script runs. it removes the users access to the registry classes giving them access to the standard devices and printers interface. Which means we’re now ready to provision SBC-Printers to replace it.

Provisioning the replacement to the user:

Now just import the userkey.reg into the users profile on login, you can do this via your user profile manager of choice, or use Group Policy preferences.

That’s it!

As you can see I haven’t streamlined the install process too much, this is mostly down to the simplicity of the tool. If you like SBC-Printers but would like a better installer, just drop me a comment below.

Roll back:

if you need to restore the standard interface, uninstall SBC-Printers then add the (local computerusers) group back to the following registry keys ACL:

  •  HKCRsoftwareclassesCLSID{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}
  • HKCRsoftwareWow6432NodeCLSID{A8A91A66-3A7D-4424-8D24-04E180695C7A}

Customising the Citrix Receiver for Mac OS

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Here’s a fun little customisation if you grow tired of the green bubbles of gloom.


default


The background above is a png file, with the following dimensions:

  • Height: 2048
  • Width: 1056

So if you want to replace this file, go find your replacement picture and ensure your picture is of a similar enough size.

Once you have a png file with similar enough dimensions, open the finder application, open the applications folder and right click the Citrix Receiver app, choose “Show Package Contents”.

Browse down to: contents > resources


file


In this folder, you will find a file “backgroundImage_big_b.png”, before you start, rename this file to back it up.

Now simply copy your replacement file into this folder, using the above name:


newfile


And that’s it! You’ve now got a lovely custom Citrix Receiver:


result


PS: I wouldn’t try to do this with windows, the file is an embedded resource and would require resource hacker to change the file.