Alternative to “Allow service to interact with desktop”?

Question

I have a windows service (C#) installed on a server that launches every 10 minutes an executable file (C#) to process some images from one directory to another. No interacti

Answer 1

If you are using Vista and later and you don't really need any interaction with the user, but have an interactive exe to execute, the Session 0 isolation feature should help alleviate some of the concerns about the 'bad practice' on having a service interact with the desktop (which in Session 0 has no physical console).

This Session 0 isolation would prevent unprivileged users from performing Shatter Attacks on your service as they get their interactive desktops in different sessions. Shatter attacks are the main reason why this 'interaction with desktop' was considered bad practice and if you are using Vista or later, it should be ok if you cannot avoid it (or will have to spend too much effort to do it).

So, if things are working fine as they are, you are probably ok.

Of course, after an OS update, things might just stop working, so it is probably better to prepare to move the dependency on interactivity out, as you don't really need it.