This question is similar to but different from Is it possible to run GUI apps in windows containers? in the following way: I do not wish to login and see the GUI. Instead, I would like to know if is possible to start a winforms or wpf application from the commandline inside of a Windows container. If it runs at all, what are the window/screen implications for the GUI application?
Perhaps I have an GUI application that starts listening on a port when a user clicks a button. And perhaps I want to test this application in an automated way, both with a script that triggers a GUI button click also running in the container, and a script that creates and runs a container with both the GUI app and the button clicker.
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I try to run an windows 10 application inside a windows servercore container.
The app can run without user input via COM-Interface (and without visible GUI), but it seems that it needs to load a hidden window in the background. When I start it on docker, the application log file indicates that it's stuck on starting this window.
Is there a way to make the app assume it successfully loaded the window?
All information I found so far was about users who want to see the GUI or about Linux/Windows combinations. None of that helped me.
In a personal project, I want to display my application before (or above) the Windows Logon, ie just before entering the Windows password.
The application must "hide" the password entry screen. I used to launch an application at Windows startup but this after viewing the Windows desktop.
Is it possible to do this please? Should I create a Windows service that will launch my application?
Thanks for your help
If this is just a personal project on your own machine you could set Windows to autologon and then just run your application like a normal startup shortcut.
A NT service is the only documented way to run code before a user logs on. However, spawning a new process in another session and interacting with the Winlogon desktop and putting yourself on top of LogonUI.exe is going to be a hack.
I understand that desktop/GUI apps are not supported in Windows containers. They do run but there's no built-in way to interact with them. I had the following idea - maybe I could use the Desktop Sharing API (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/_rdp/) for this purpose, the idea is to run a desktop app, then run a sharing program that uses the Desktop Sharing API, and connect to it using a Desktop Sharing API viewing program from the host.
I had to do some recap about window stations and desktops, and I noticed that when starting the container with cmd in interactive mode, I'm logged with ContainerAdministrator as a service (logon type 5). I tried running some WinAPI functions that deal with desktops and winstation and got some access denied results, so I switched to running cmd as system.
The window station of the cmd process (and other child processes) is not the interactive WinSta0, but instead some other service window station, which makes sense since I'm logged on as a service, and I figured that I can't use this window station, so I used a little program I wrote to run notepad in Winsta0 in the Default desktop. Afterwards I ran another program that enumerates the windows on WinSta0\Default, and the notepad window does get enumerated and I also get it's title, so it's running somewhere.
So now I tried running the desktop sharing API program (also on WinSta0\Default). It runs and I can connect from the host, but I only get a black screen without anything on it. I also tried running a program that takes a screenshot of the windows but I get an empty bitmap.
So I thought maybe the Default desktop is not the active desktop, and by using the OpenInputDesktop function I could confirm it - the current desktop was the Winlogon desktop, so I used the SwitchDesktop function to switch to the Default desktop (I used OpenInputDesktop again to verify that it actually worked).
Unfortunately, this didn't change anything, I still get an empty screen and empty bitmaps.
I know that containers are built for micro services and are not supposed to run GUI apps and so, but still - is there a way to make this work? Or any ideas of what else I can check? Alternatively, if you know that it can't work - I would also be happy to hear a good technical explanation of why it doesn't work.
I am running some Windows application as a service. This application used Office applications(Word, Excel). The service runs under specific user account.
Here is the problem:
When service is trying to use Excel, Excel is showing some dialog window which blocks the application from running. Since it's a service running in noninteractive mode you are not able to see the dialog window.
I was wondering if there is a way to get the title of a dialog window to understand the root cause of it.
I tried using EnumDesktopWindows but it didnt help.
Platform: Windows 10.
Thanks
I need to automate a windows only java graphical app in a cloud vm.
I'm currently trying with windwos server 2008 and robotJS in node, if I'm connected to the VM in RDP and showing the screen, all is good and it work, but it's no real automation.
If managed to launch the user session at start, and added the app and my script in the startup dire to have them launched when the user logon, but when I do that, the robot only see a black screen with the start button when I'm taking a screenshot, and it can't interact with the app.
As someone already try to do that ?
Any insight would be good, I can change the server version, use another automation tool, anything if it work.
I let that here because it might one day help someone.
The trick was to use keyboard shortcut instead of mouse, not sure why.