Launching processes from a Windows Service

I have written a C# Windows Service (for use on Windows 8.1 (32/64 bit) and Windows 10) that monitors for certain conditions and when these are met, it launches another Windows Forms application with some arguments that control a message displayed to a user. I’m well aware of the issues of a service interacting with a user session, and the service uses a (slightly) modified version of the MSDN code to launch processes from a service in a user’s session which is available here: https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/CSCreateProcessAsUserFromSe-b682134e#content

When the service is triggered, it will happily launch Notepad in the user’s session if the launchpath variable I specify has a value of C:\Windows\sysnative\notepad.exe

However, if I try to call my other WinForms application with the command line:

Where <0>is replaced by:

and the other two placeholders ( <1>and <2>) are replaced by launch arguments, the machine on which the service runs logs system error code 123, which this link https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/debug/system-error-codes—0-499-) tells me means «The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.»

I have tried hard-coding the path, moving the WinForms application so the execution path is also in c:\windows\sysnative however nothing seems to work, I always get the same error in the logs and the application doesn’t load. If I make a shortcut to the kiosk.exe application so I can pass in some test arguments, it launches fine.

Has anyone else ever encountered this? I’d be grateful for any advice.

Launch an exe from browser (Windows)

I need to launch an installed application from browser (not just IE).

I would like to check if there are any other ways of implementing it?

In my scenario I am expected to launch an existing application from the client machine. So can I register this application to uri scheme and use it.

My only concern is in both the scenarios(or at least the second scenario) we have to make registry changes. And if the registry settings are not present this won’t work.

Is there any other way which doesn’t depend on registry settings or any prerequisites.

1 Answer 1

There isn’t a way to call an executable outside the browser without the types of things you described (and I’d probably use the application URI scheme in your place because it’s the least custom plugin work on your part). This is because if you could call any application without the user requiring a registry edit or some related change, you could do anything you wanted with any application you know would be on the users’ machine. It’s called sandboxing, and HOWTO GEEK has a decent article on it.

A sandbox is a tightly controlled environment where programs can be run. Sandboxes restrict what a piece of code can do, giving it just as many permissions as it needs without adding additional permissions that could be abused.

For example, your web browser essentially runs web pages you visit in a sandbox. They’re restricted to running in your browser and accessing a limited set of resources — they can’t view your webcam without permission or read your computer’s local files. If websites you visit weren’t sandboxed and isolated from the rest of your system, visiting a malicious website would be as bad as installing a virus.

As they point out, you’re already in a sandbox when you’re in the browser. If you want to write an application that can be accessed from within there, you need to work within the capabilities and restrictions of HTML, JavaScript, etc.

From your own MSDN link you can see that on Windows,

Without this key, the handler application will not launch.

Your post seems to indicate that Windows is indeed your relevant target OS. If you want to do this on another operation system (or if someone else reads this question), the methods will vary from what you already found (these are already Stack Overflow questions):

In theory, you could create plugins or configuration applications specific to each likely browser to do something totally custom. However, you’d be reinventing the wheel because you’d need the same rights elevation to install your app/plugin. Additionally, you’d be reinventing the protocol mentioned above and somehow distributing the application for installation ahead of time.

Also, sometimes it looks like applications are smoothly gaining access to the user’s browser experience when new web functionality like webcam access and geolocation is being utilized. What we’re actually seeing here is somewhat new JavaScript APIs in place of Flash applets and other things we used to need to harness through 3rd party software.

Launch an exe application from windows service

I have a service which should open an exe application ( C# Application ) based on certain conditions. When the service is started in debugging mode ( Visual studio ) it opens the application. But when it is installed as a service, it does not do so. It fails to open the application. Why is this happening?

3 Answers 3

What you’re trying to do isn’t directly possible under normal circumstances — simply launching an app in a new process from your Windows Service code is not going to interact with the GUI of the currently logged in user I’m afraid.

There are ways of communicating between a service and the GUI however.

Based on your comments, I think what you are really looking for here is a normal userspace application and a scheduler. You might want to use Windows’ own scheduler to run the application every monday, if it is an always-on box, or place the application in Startup. When the application runs, it should check the current day of week, and if it is monday and the application has not previously run this day, the application should start. If not, you can safely terminate the application entirely.

Thanks for the answers! I found out a solution for it and im posting it here. I created a dummy app which is hidden on startup and it does the exact same function that the service was intended to.

1.create a dummy app (copy paste code from service to form application) Hide it after start up. 2.start the application right after installation. 3.add registry key so that it starts up after a system reboot.

in simple words, clone service behavior.

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Windows Service launching and Exe

I am currently working on a project that contains a WCF service, a Windows service and a WPF application. The Windows service communicates with the WCF, and under a certain circumstance, must launch the WPF application for the user to receive messages. (WCF is on a remote server, the rest is on the client). I’ve hit a bit of a snag with the launch. I have the services writing messages to the application logs so that I can somewhat ‘debug’ along the way. The Windows service runs the following code with no problems.

C# code, Windows Service:

The WPF application doesn’t execute in the current user’s session. Instead, I get a popup to view the message. Here is a picture of it:

Once selecting the ‘View the message’ option, it of course switches me to a different session and then runs the WPF application.

My question is, how should I go about getting the WPF application to launch within the current user’s session, or the ‘active’ session?

1 Answer 1

You are getting this because the user that is trying the launch the WPF executable does not have permission to interact with the desktop.

Windows Services typically do not run under an account with that permission, and it is considered a security vulnerability to do so.

In most cases, it is recommended that you not change the Allow service to interact with desktop setting. If you allow the service to interact with the desktop, any information that the service displays on the desktop will also be displayed on an interactive user’s desktop. A malicious user could then take control of the service or attack it from the interactive desktop.

A more secure alternative would be to have the WPF application always run in the system tray and arrange a mechanism for the Windows Service to signal the WPF application that a message needs to be shown. One simple mechanism is to write a file to an agreed location and use a file watcher in the WPF app to look for that file (and delete it after displaying). Note that the windows service might be running long before a user logs in (so long before the WPF app is running), so whatever notification mechanism you use needs to allow for messages to accumulate and be displayed at once after login.

Create Windows service from executable

Is there any quick way to, given an executable file, create a Windows service that, when started, launches it?

10 Answers 10

To create a Windows Service from an executable, you can use sc.exe :

You must have quotation marks around the actual exe path, and a space after the binPath= .

Note that it will not work for just any executable: the executable must be a Windows Service (i.e. implement ServiceMain). When registering a non-service executable as a service, you’ll get the following error upon trying to start the service:

Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

There are tools that can create a Windows Service from arbitrary, non-service executables, see the other answers for examples of such tools.

Use NSSM( the non-Sucking Service Manager ) to run a .BAT or any .EXE file as a service.

• Step 1: Download NSSM
• Step 2: Install your sevice with nssm.exe install [serviceName]
• Step 3: This will open a GUI which you will use to locate your executable

Extending (Kevin Tong) answer.

Step 1: Download & Unzip nssm-2.24.zip

Step 2: From command line type:

C:\> nssm.exe install [servicename]

it will open GUI as below (the example is UT2003 server), then simply browse it to: yourapplication.exe

Many existing answers include human intervention at install time. This can be an error-prone process. If you have many executables wanted to be installed as services, the last thing you want to do is to do them manually at install time.

Towards the above described scenario, I created serman, a command line tool to install an executable as a service. All you need to write (and only write once) is a simple service configuration file along with your executable. Run

will install the service. stdout and stderr are all logged. For more info, take a look at the project website.

A working configuration file is very simple, as demonstrated below. But it also has many useful features such as and

these extras prove useful.. need to be executed as an administrator

If your service name has any spaces, enclose in «quotes».

I’ve tested a good product for that: AlwaysUp. Not free but they have a 30 days trial period so you can give it a try.

Same as Sergii Pozharov’s answer, but with a PowerShell cmdlet:

See New-Service for more customization.

This will only work for executables that already implement the Windows Services API.

You can check out my small free utility for service create\edit\delete operations. Here is create example:

Go to Service -> Modify -> Create

Executable file (google drive): [Download]

Probably all your answers are better, but — just to be complete on the choice of options — I wanted to remind about old, similar method used for years:

SrvAny (installed by InstSrv)

I created the cross-platform Service Manager software a few years back so that I could start PHP and other scripting languages as system services on Windows, Mac, and Linux OSes:

Service Manager is a set of precompiled binaries that install and manage a system service on the target OS using nearly identical command-line options (source code also available). Each platform does have subtle differences but the core features are mostly normalized.

If the child process dies, Service Manager automatically restarts it.

Processes that are started with Service Manager should periodically watch for two notification files to handle restart and reload requests but they don’t necessarily have to do that. Service Manager will force restart the child process if it doesn’t respond in a timely fashion to controlled restart/reload requests.