Launching a process in user’s session from a service

Question

In Windows Vista/7/2008/2008R2, is it at all possible to launch a process in a user\'s session from a service? Specifically, the local session would be most useful.

Answer 1

If it helps, i was faced with a similar problem, but wanted a pure powershell solution.

I cobbled together bits from other websites and came up with this:

function Invoke-CommandInSession 
{
    [CmdletBinding()]
    param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)]
        [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
        [ScriptBlock] $expression
    )

    $commandLine = “powershell“

    ## Convert the command into an encoded command for PowerShell
    $commandBytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes($expression)
    $encodedCommand = [Convert]::ToBase64String($commandBytes)
    $args = “-Output XML -EncodedCommand $encodedCommand”


    $action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute $commandLine -Argument $args
    $setting = New-ScheduledTaskSettingsSet -DeleteExpiredTaskAfter ([Timespan]::Zero)
    $trigger = New-ScheduledTaskTrigger -Once -At ((Get-Date) + ([Timespan]::FromSeconds(5)))
    $task = New-ScheduledTask -Action $action -Trigger $trigger -Settings $setting
    Register-ScheduledTask "Invoke-CommandInSession - $([Guid]::NewGuid())" -InputObject $task
}

Yes, its a little weird, but it works - and most importantly you can call it from within ps remoting