Launch program from windows service

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Dear Microsoft support team,

We have build an window based kiosk application in WPF. Now we need to launch/run the .exe using the window service. We tried several example using process.start() but neither able to start nor getting error.

Please assist me on this will be highly appreciate.

All replies

You cannot run a UI from a Windows service. Services run in session 0 and are not tied to any user. The user would never see the UI.

If you want to show a UI for a kiosk like app then set it as the startup app and use group policies to lock down the machine. Setting it as the shell may work as Stefan mentioned but I’ve never tried it.

Michael Taylor http://www.michaeltaylorp3.net

Hi Vipin Panwar,

If there any form in your WPF application? Or only classes in your application? If there is no form, when you open the .exe file, nothing happened.

How do you open the WPF application with process.start()? Could your provide some code for us to test?

Here is a simple example for your reference.

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Thanks for your quick response!

Let me make it simple, Let say we need to run Notepad.exe from window service. Reason is we need to keep monitor a specific exe, Is it running or not on a window 10 machine. If not then the window service will launch the Notepad.exe.

In my case, the only difference is we have our own build exe instead of Notepad.exe.

Please let us know if you still need more clarification.

Thanks for your prompt response.

Yes the WPF based window application have UI forms. on launch it will launch the home page have some feature on pages.

Let me make it simple, Let say we need to run Notepad.exe from window service. Reason is we need to keep monitor a specific exe, Is it running or not on a window 10 machine. If not then the window service will launch the Notepad.exe.

In my case, the only difference is we have our own build exe instead of Notepad.exe.

Please let us know if you still need more clarification.

How can I run an EXE program from a Windows Service using C#?

How can I run an EXE program from a Windows Service using C#?

This is my code:

When I run this service, the application is not starting.
What’s wrong with my code?

9 Answers 9

This will never work, at least not under Windows Vista or later. The key problem is that you’re trying to execute this from within a Windows Service, rather than a standard Windows application. The code you’ve shown will work perfectly in a Windows Forms, WPF, or Console application, but it won’t work at all in a Windows Service.

Windows Services cannot start additional applications because they are not running in the context of any particular user. Unlike regular Windows applications, services are now run in an isolated session and are prohibited from interacting with a user or the desktop. This leaves no place for the application to be run.

More information is available in the answers to these related questions:

The best solution to your problem, as you’ve probably figured out by now, is to create a standard Windows application instead of a service. These are designed to be run by a particular user and are associated with that user’s desktop. This way, you can run additional applications whenever you want, using the code that you’ve already shown.

Another possible solution, assuming that your Console application does not require an interface or output of any sort, is to instruct the process not to create a window. This will prevent Windows from blocking the creation of your process, because it will no longer request that a Console window be created. You can find the relevant code in this answer to a related question.

i have tried this article Code Project, it is working fine for me. I have used the code too. article is excellent in explanation with screenshot.

I am adding necessary explanation to this scenario

You have just booted up your computer and are about to log on. When you log on, the system assigns you a unique Session ID. In Windows Vista, the first User to log on to the computer is assigned a Session ID of 1 by the OS. The next User to log on will be assigned a Session ID of 2. And so on and so forth. You can view the Session ID assigned to each logged on User from the Users tab in Task Manager.

But your windows service is brought under session ID of 0. This session is isolated from other sessions. This ultimately prevent the windows service to invoke the application running under user session’s like 1 or 2.

In order to invoke the application from windows service you need to copy the control from winlogon.exe which acts as present logged user as shown in below screenshot.

you can use from windows task scheduler for this purpose, there are many libraries like TaskScheduler that help you.

for example consider we want to scheduling a task that will executes once five seconds later:

notepad.exe will be executed five seconds later.

for details and more information please go to wiki

if you know which class and method in that assembly you need, you can invoke it yourself like this:

Top answer with most upvotes isn’t wrong but still the opposite of what I would post. I say it will totally work to start an exe file and you can do this in the context of any user. Logically you just can’t have any user interface or ask for user input.

Here is my advice:

1. Create a simple Console Application that does what your service should do right on start without user interaction. I really recommend not using the Windows Service project type especially because you (currently) can’t using .NET Core.
2. Add code to start your exe you want to call from service

Example to start e.g. plink.exe. You could even listen to the output:

1. Use NSSM (Non-Sucking Service Manager) to register that Console Application as service. NSSM can be controlled via command line and can show an UI to configure the service or you configure it via command line. You can run the service in the context of any user if you know the login data of that user.

I took LocalSystem account which is default and more than Local Service. It worked fine without having to enter login information of a specific user. I didn’t even tick the checkbox «Allow service to interact with desktop» which you could if you need higher permissions.

Lastly I just want to say how funny it is that the top answer says quite the opposite of my answer and still both of us are right it’s just how you interpret the question :-D. If you now say but you can’t with the windows service project type — You CAN but I had this before and installation was sketchy and it was maybe kind of an unintentional hack until I found NSSM.

You can execute an .exe from a Windows service very well in Windows XP. I have done it myself in the past.

You need to make sure you had checked the option «Allow to interact with the Desktop» in the Windows service properties. If that is not done, it will not execute.

I need to check in Windows 7 or Vista as these versions requires additional security privileges so it may throw an error, but I am quite sure it can be achieved either directly or indirectly. For XP I am certain as I had done it myself.

First, we are going to create a Windows Service that runs under the System account. This service will be responsible for spawning an interactive process within the currently active User’s Session. This newly created process will display a UI and run with full admin rights. When the first User logs on to the computer, this service will be started and will be running in Session0; however the process that this service spawns will be running on the desktop of the currently logged on User. We will refer to this service as the LoaderService.

Next, the winlogon.exe process is responsible for managing User login and logout procedures. We know that every User who logs on to the computer will have a unique Session ID and a corresponding winlogon.exe process associated with their Session. Now, we mentioned above, the LoaderService runs under the System account. We also confirmed that each winlogon.exe process on the computer runs under the System account. Because the System account is the owner of both the LoaderService and the winlogon.exe processes, our LoaderService can copy the access token (and Session ID) of the winlogon.exe process and then call the Win32 API function CreateProcessAsUser to launch a process into the currently active Session of the logged on User. Since the Session ID located within the access token of the copied winlogon.exe process is greater than 0, we can launch an interactive process using that token.

I think You are copying the .exe to different location. This might be the problem I guess. When you copy the exe, you are not copying its dependencies.

So, what you can do is, put all dependent dlls in GAC so that any .net exe can access it

Else, do not copy the exe to new location. Just create a environment variable and call the exe in your c#. Since the path is defined in environment variables, the exe is can be accessed by your c# program.

previously I had some kind of same issue in my c#.net 3.5 project in which I was trying to run a .exe file from c#.net code and that exe was nothing but the another project exe(where i added few supporting dlls for my functionality) and those dlls methods I was using in my exe application. At last I resolved this by creating that application as a separate project to the same solution and i added that project output to my deployment project. According to this scenario I answered, If its not what he wants then I am extremely sorry.

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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