Horizon Client for Windows 5.5 | 15 October 2020

These release notes cover the following topics:

Key Features

VMware Horizon Client for Windows makes it easy to access your remote desktops and published applications with the best possible user experience on the Local Area Network (LAN) or across a Wide Area Network (WAN).

  • Support for Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows 7
  • Unmatched performance - The adaptive capabilities of the PCoIP display protocol and the VMware Blast display protocol are optimized to deliver the best user experience, even over low-bandwidth and high-latency connections. Your remote desktops and published applications are fast and responsive, regardless of where you are.
  • Simple connectivity - Horizon Client for Windows is tightly integrated with VMware Horizon 6 and Horizon 7 for simple setup and connectivity.
  • Secure from any location - At your desk or away from the office, your data is delivered securely to you wherever you are. SSL/TLS encryption is always used to protect user credentials, and enhanced certificate checking is performed on the client device. Horizon Client supports optional RADIUS and RSA SecurID authentication. You can also install Horizon Client so that it runs in FIPS mode.

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What's New in This Release

Horizon Client for Windows 5.5 includes the following new features:

  • NTLM group policy settings for the log in as current user feature
    You can use Windows Challenge/Response (NTLM) authentication when using the log in as current user feature by configuring the Allow fallback from Kerberos to NTLM and Always use NTLM for servers group policy settings. This feature requires Connection Server 7.13. See Security Settings for Client GPOs.
  • Client version restriction
    A warning message appears in Horizon Client if you try to connect to a server that does not support your Horizon Client version. For information about setting up client version restrictions, see Global Client Restriction Settings for Client Sessions.
  • Configure the maximum latency for mouse coalescing
    The Configure maximum latency for mouse coalescing group policy setting enables you to configure the maximum latency allowed, in milliseconds, when coalescing mouse movement events. See General Settings for Client GPOs.
  • Allow screen sharing for Microsoft Teams as a published application
    You can configure settings in Horizon Client to allow screen sharing and hide the screen sharing consent dialog box when using Microsoft Teams as a published application. See Allowing Screen Sharing for Microsoft Teams as a Published Application.
  • Denial-of-service vulnerability fix
    For information, see VMSA-2020-0022.
  • Video support in Media Optimization for Microsoft Teams
    Both audio and video are supported. Previously, only audio was supported. To use this feature, the Enable Media Optimization for Microsoft Teams option must be selected during Horizon Client for Windows installation. See Install Horizon Client for Windows.

Internationalization

The user interface and documentation for Horizon Client are available in English, Japanese, French, German, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Spanish.

Before You Begin

Resolved Issues

The number provided before each resolved issue refers to the VMware internal issues tracking system.

Known Issues

  • The serial port redirection group policy setting Bandwidth Limit does not set a limit on the bandwidth.

    Workaround: Use third-party software to limit the bandwidth.

  • With serial port redirection, at a high baud rate such as 115200, the performance of VMware Blast is significantly worse than PCoIP, and the connection might sometimes hang.

    Workaround: Use a baud rate of 9600.

  • In an IPv6 environment, if you configure IP address mapping for location-based printing, users might encounter a problem accessing the printer because the client can have multiple IPv6 addresses. Anytime the client connects, it can use any one of the addresses.

    Workaround: Use the location-based printing group policy setting IP Range to include the multiple addresses. However, the printing problem might still occur because the client might use a temporary address, which is not in the specified range.

  • On Windows 7 client systems, you cannot use the Windows Media MMR feature with videos that use Dolby AC3 audio. On Windows 7 clients, Windows Media Foundation does not have the proper codec to support Dolby AC3 audio files. This issue does not occur on Windows 8.x clients.

  • Sometimes the virtual printing feature and location-based printing feature are not able to display the correct list of printers in the Devices and Printers window of a remote, session-based desktop. This issue can occur with desktops provided by Windows Server 2012 RDS hosts. The printers shown within applications are correct, however.

    Workaround: Log off the desktop running on the Windows Server host and reconnect to it.

  • Virtual printing might not work if you connect to a remote desktop using RDP, open Horizon Client on the remote desktop, launch a nested application session, and then log off and log back in to the desktop. When you try to print from the nested application, the expected printer list might not appear. This issue only occurs after you log back in to the desktop.

    Workaround: Reset the application on the remote desktop. To avoid having to set applications, use PCoIP for both ends of the session-in-session connection. That is, use PCoIP to connect to the remote desktop and use PCoIP to connect from within the desktop to the nested application. If you are using location-based printing, you can resolve this issue by closing and reopening the application's print dialog box.

  • If multiple Horizon clients connect to the same RDS desktop or remote application simultaneously and map to a location-based printer with the same name, the printer appears in the first client session, but not in later client sessions. This problem also occurs for client-redirected virtual printers.

    Workaround: For the client sessions in which the printer does not appear, perform a manual refresh. For a remote desktop, press F5 or refresh the Devices and Printers window. For a remote application, close and reopen the application print dialog box. The location-based printer appears in the printer list.

  • If your client operating system is Windows 8.1 and you launch a Microsoft RDP session, pressing Ctrl+Alt+Insert does not send Ctrl+Alt+Del to the remote virtual desktop.

    Workaround: Upgrade the operating system by installing Windows 8.1 Update.

  • If you use a touch-enabled screen on your client system to work in a remote desktop, do not use the Enable Relative Mouse feature. This feature provides improved mouse performance for 3D and CAD applications, but for touch-enabled screens and tablets, the mouse coordinates are not translated properly, even in 3D and CAD applications.

  • If you have multiple monitors with different screen resolutions and expand Horizon Client to all monitors and then select the Enable Relative Mouse feature, occasionally, the mouse pointer might not be able to move downward beyond a certain position.

    Workaround: Press Ctrl+Alt.

  • When a user connects to a desktop using PCoIP shortly after the desktop is powered on, autofit of the desktop window might not work. This issue happens most often if the desktop or network is under stress shortly after power-on (to start multiple applications or to map network drives, for example).

    Workaround: Double-click the desktop window's title to go into window mode and double-click the title bar to go into all-monitor mode.

  • On Windows 10, Windows Fax and Scan hangs when using a CardScan 800 device.

    Workaround: None.

  • When you use the Flash redirection feature to play a video on some websites, such as www.ted.com, you cannot exit full-screen mode because the Exit Full Screen button does not appear in the Flash player toolbar.

    Workaround: Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and unlock the client side to see the Horizon Client toolbar and then adjust the window size to
    make the Flash player window smaller.

  • When you use the Flash redirection feature to play a video, if you click the Ad link at the bottom of the screen or the More Info link in the Flash player, the advertisment page does not pop up and the playback pauses.

    Workaround: None.

  • If LockedGuestSize is set to 640x480 on the client machine and you launch a remote desktop in Window - Small mode, the resolution helper tooltip does not appear when you drag the window edge.

    Workaround: None

  • If you install Horizon Agent and then install Horizon Client on the same Windows machine (a nested mode installation), and you later uninstall Horizon Agent, the client's "log in as current user" function is lost after Horizon Agent is uninstalled. This problem occurs because the wsnotify.dll file is removed after Horizon Agent is uninstalled.

    Workaround: Reinstall Horizon Agent or Horizon Client to bring back the "log in as current user" function.

  • The DPI synchronization feature does not work with a Windows Server 2008 R2 remote desktop.

    Workaround: Install Microsoft Hotfix You cannot change the DPI setting through a Remote Desktop session on a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 in the remote desktop.

  • If you connect multiple USB devices to the client system, select Automatically connect at startup in Horizon Client, and then connect, disconnect, and quickly reconnect to a remote desktop, not all of the USB devices are redirected to the remote desktop after you reconnect.

    Workaround: Wait for the USB devices to be redirected back to the client machine (for example, wait for the devices to appear in the device manager) and then reconnect to the remote deskop. Alternatively, you can manually redirect any unredirected USB devices to the remote desktop.

  • After you disconnect and reconnect multiple remote desktops, you see an error message that states that an error occurred when connecting a USB device to your remote desktop. This problem typically occurs when multiple USB devices are connected to the client machine and you select Automatically connect at startup in Horizon Client.

    Workaround: Close the error message box and manually redirect the USB devices to the remote desktop.

  • If you use the RDP protocol to connect to a published desktop from a physical machine, and then you try to connect to the same published desktop from a zero client, the RDP session ends on the physical machine and the zero client cannot connect.

    Workaround: Relaunch the same desktop pool with RDP from the physical machine, select Options > Disconnect and logoff in the launched RDP session, and then reconnect to the same desktop pool from the zero client.

  • A “Pending session expired” error might occur when you try to connect to a remote desktop with the Microsoft RDP display protocol. This problem only occurs in large-scale environments where a Unified Access Gateway appliance is used and virtual printing is enabled.

    Workaround: Establish a connection to the remote desktop without using a Unified Access Gateway appliance, or disable virtual printing and establish a connection using RDP.

  • When virtual printing is used in Horizon Client, the client processes might not end when you disconnect and close Horizon Client. This problem is caused by a hang that occurs when the virtual printing feature is unloaded.

    Workaround: See VMware Knowledge Base (KB) article 2003626: Disabling virtual printing (ThinPrint) in VMware Horizon Client for Windows.

  • With the clipboard audit feature, the event log reports one byte more than the actual length of the data that was copied from the agent machine to the client machine. For example, if you copy 10 bytes of data from a remote desktop to the client machine, the event log reports "XXX copy 11 bytes CPFORMAT_TEXT data from Horizon Agent to Horizon Client XXX with clipboard." Also, if "\r\n" is in the copied text, the event log records only the length of "\r." For example, if you copy the following text, the audit message records the length as 12 bytes:
    "aaa
    bbb
    ccc"

    Workaround: None.

  • You cannot use the device bridge feature to redirect fingerprint scanner devices to remote desktops and published applications. When you use the DeviceTester application to test the connected devices in a remote desktop or published application, the error message "Status: Please connect the device first" appears.

    Workaround: None. This problem is a third-party issue.

  • With the Browser Redirection feature, the context menu options on right click are limited to open link in new tab, open link in new window, back, and forward.

    Workaround: None.

  • If you select Connect USB Device > Automatically Connect at Startup for a camera, Horizon Client stops responding when you start the remote desktop.

    Workaround: None.

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