Is there any way to start a GUI application from a windows service on Windows 7?

Question

I have done a lot of searching to find a way to start a GUI application from a windows service on Windows 7. Most of what I have found is that with Windows 7 services now r

Answer 1

Windows 7 introduced what is called "Session 0 isolation" that in practice means that every service (except system services) run in a separate non-interactive session. For this reason you cannot directly create a GUI from within the service, except if you run in legacy mode by flagging the Interact With Destop option, which is not good if you plan to run your service for some years in the future.

As David Heffernan said, the best is to use a client-server architecture. WCF makes it easy to communicate with named pipes.

This page is a good starting point to read about Session 0 Isolation and this white paper is also very good.