Citrix Xenserver 6.1 Xentools installation problems

I really do love the Citrix Xendesktop platform and products associated with it, but all too often Citrix have launch issues with their products. The latest issue is with Xentools 6.1 installer being a little dodgy and feature lacking (no PVS/VSS support) being a key problem.

I also experienced a number of issues upgrading from Xentools standard 6.0 to 6.1 on machines that didn't require PVS support.

One of the main issues that I had is what Citrix call "continous reboots with standard tools installation never finishing". Citrix provide the following explaination for the problem:

"This issue occurs when attempting to install the Standard Tools shipped with XenServer 6.1 into a VM that has no virtual network interfaces. A workaround is to create at least one virtual network interface, install the Standard Tools, and then remove the virtual network interface (if so desired)."

In my case there was in fact a virtual network interface and I was still having the looping. Eventually after around 10 reboots the installer simply hangs at the very start of the "installing drivers, installing guest tools screen" and goes no further.

Windows eventlogs give no clues and Citrix logs don't any useful information. After following the "Uninstalling the Xenserver 6.1 standard tools" steps from the CTX135099 Xenserver Tools Workaround Guide for 6.1.0, including removing all the Windows Driver packages manually, I still had no joy. In fact on some systems I couldn't remove the "Windows Driver Package - Citrix Systems Inc. (xennet) Net" package.

After scouring windows programs and featuring and removing everything guest/driver related I feel back to the trusted "wmic product get name" command to get a list of installed products. I found "Citrix Xen Windows x64 PV Drivers" which wasn't listed under Windows programs and features GUI. It seems the "Citrix Xen Windows x64 PV Drivers" package failed to uninstall or install properly and was holding up the xentools installation process. To resolve the problem is fairly simple.

1. Boot into Windows and open a command prompt
2. Issue the command - wmic product where name='Citrix Xen Windows x64 PV Drivers' call uninstall
3. Reboot
4. Rerun the xentools installation process

After following the above steps I finally had a working Xentools standard successfully installed with statistically reporting being sent back to Xencenter.

Remember if you want to install the legacy tools (with support for PVS and volume shadow copy) then your VM must have its platform:device_id set to 0001. You can read more about changing the device_id under the section title "Preparing to Install the XenServer 6.0.2 Hotfix 9 Tools or XenServer 6.1 Legacy Tools in a New Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2 VM (for PVS or VSS Support)" of CTX135099.