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Troubleshooting an Idle Sessions in Winlogon.exe

Posted on December 9, 2022

A user experiences an active but idle session they can’t remove, despite trying to kill the processes in the console. Restarting Profile Management and checking AV exclusions have been suggested, as well as adding processes to Reg for Logoffmodules and using a Logoff Trigger. The parent process is Winlogon.exe. https://cuacademy.controlup.com/ can be accessed for further support.


Read the entire ‘Troubleshooting an Idle Sessions in Winlogon.exe’ thread below:

Not a ControlUp issue but.. have issue sometimes where i have an “active” but idle session that I cant remove. Cant disconnect it, cant log it off. These are the processes that are still running and it wont allow me to terminate them. Anyone see this type of behavior before?Server 2019

status in director is “logging off”


If you kill the processes in the console does it log off the session?


I can’t kill it.

Only thing is rebooting the entire machine.

Kinda rude really


Lol, have you tried killing the I individual processes? Try restarting profile management and see if you can recover without a reboot.

I’m on phone so hard to see screenshots


Yes I’ve tried. Several day access denied so I can’t kill them all to release the session

*say


I was with different customer they had these ghost sessions, and if they killed the processes off within a certain length of time they would be able to log the session off cleanly. I actually think there was a citrix hotfix for it


i think CtxGfx.exe is the process hanging things up.


Did you add it to syslogoffmodules?


parent process is winlogon.exe

yes


You could try a logoff trigger to kill the processes you have listed, maybe that would be a workaround for you.


actually I am a damn dirty liar. those 2 .exe are NOT in my logoffcheck

perhaps that is it!


Maybe… wouldn’t hold your breath tho! If you can’t kill the process from CU then maybe the OS won’t be able to at logoff time, but defo worth a try. Let me know how you get on after adding that in. Theres probably a few processes you want to add to that list, google is your friend here 😉


altrhough wfshell.exe IS in the list and it is still running and i cant kill it

guess i will see.

thank you for your suggestions!


I think that reg for logoffmodules can only logoff usermode processes. Try the logoff trigger as well and see if restarting profile management makes any difference for you. Would also suspect AV hooking into one of these processes, check your exclusions.


never thought of logoff trigger. this will be my first time using one.

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Categories: All Archives
Topics: Citrix, Logs, Triggers

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