Issue
In SAS on Virtual Desktop, certain drives cause crashes and an error of "ERROR: Windows error code: 53 in hx_disk_access ..." when opened in SAS Explorer, often after a long wait. SAS may seem to crash or display an hourglass icon for a long time.
Explanation
When connecting to applications on Virtual Desktop, the Citrix Workspace App will "remap" the local hard drives and network drives that are mapped on your local computer so they will appear in the remote session. This allows access to files that are stored on the hard drive of the computer you are connecting from. SAS is not compatible with Citrix local drive remapping and errors or crashes may result.
Resolution
Drives such as your home drive (H:) are mapped whenever you log into any windows computer on campus. When you log into an application on Virtual Desktop, these drives are mapped as well so they will show up twice - once for the login to the Virtual Desktop server and once when logged into your client computer (remapped to the session). Opening the remapped drives in SAS will cause issues but opening the drives that were mapped when you logged into the Virtual Desktop session will open fine.
In SAS Explorer, the drives that have "on COMPUTERNAME" in them are remapped drives from the client. (In this example "Local Disk E: on MEDIASVR" is a mapped drive back to the local hard drive E: on the computer computer, called MEDIASVR") These are the drives that are problematic in SAS because it isn't compatible with remapped drives. The other drives will work fine. In the screenshot below, there is an H: drive that was mapped natively in the Virtual Desktop session and there is an H: drive that was remapped from the client, where the H: drive is also mapped.
The H: drive on the right will work fine but the remapped drive will cause issues with SAS because of incompatibilities with the application with Citrix client remapped drives. The other drives in the screen shot that have the computer name (MEDIASVR in this example) will also cause issues.