I have an existing GUI application that should have been implemented as a service. Basically, I need to be able to remotely log onto and off of the Windows 2003 server and still keep this program running.
Is this even possible?
EDIT: Further refinement here... I do not have the source, it's not my application.
Has anyone used a third party product like: Always Up?
Seems to do what I need. It's the capability to keep running through login / logout cycles I need. And the capability to ignore that it's a GUI app and run it anyway.
They must be linking into the exe manually and calling WinMain or something.
What happens if you create a service. That service is configure to interact with the desktop. Configure it to run a some user and to start automatic. From the service CreateProcess on this other application. I'd guess this is quick to try using C# (C/C++ was alot of code to even be a service if I recall). Would that work??
BUT!
My first thought would be to create a virtual computer in a server-class virtual host (like Virtual Server, HyperV, VMWare). Those virtual machines will run as service (or whatever Hyper V does). The virtual machine would always be running - regardless of logging in and out.
Make this virtual computer auto login to windows (TweakUI can set this up) and then just launch the GUI app using a shortcut to the Startup folder. You can even remote desktop into it use the program's GUI (I bet Always Up can't do that).
A service shouldn't have a GUI, since it should run without any needing any intervention from a user, and there are all sorts of problems associated with finding and communicating with the correct users desktop.
Since, presumably the reason for asking this is to be able to remotely monitor the application, the way to do it would be to have two applications. The service side (written basically as a console application) and the client/monitoring GUI side. The service would use some remote connectivity (when I did this I used Named Pipes) to communicate with the client/monitoring application. Either should be able to run without the other, and certainly the service should be able to run with out the client.