Well, my project is moving along very well as I am able to interact between an automated windows service running a desktop application or web based application, interact with that app and set data appropriately using Win32 API calls like SendMessage or PostMessage or others like that.
My current problem is that we now have a RDP (remote Desktop) application to interact with and I am not sure if that is even possible. Can we see the Windows handles for the RDP Container or is there another way of interacting with the Remote Desktop from an external application?
I hope this question makes sense and I appreciate any and all help.
Related
I have installed QAD Netui Client (application with .exe executable) on Windows EC2 instance.
I would like to access that application through web browser or by any other way without the need of logging-in into windows instance.
The reason behind this requirement is that, I don't want users to get information about machine on which my application is installed.
Is there any way to achieve this requirement ?
Not likely. This appears to be a Window GUI application rather than something like a web application.
As a GUI application it needs a Windows desktop session to run. This is accomplished with remote desktop or other similar application that allows you to share a desktop with another client.
However, you can set up a Windows user profile that has much more restricted access to the machine. This is probably the closest you will get.
I have a ActiveX control hosting a flash-player which is in turn running a flash file trying to access data from a web-address.
In an old Windows Application version of my application everything works fine and the flash file is able to access the web-content.
However, in a newer Console Appliction version of the application it can no longer access the web-content.
Any ideas what might be causing this? Is there some kind of difference between a Windows Application and a Console application in terms of security/permissions that might affect an ActiveX hosted flash-player?
I'm using Windows 7.
First of all - how did you manage to get an ActiveX into a console application? :) I think ax needs window handles and all such things...
Anyways, there are different kinds of sandboxes from the Flash player perspective, what you are seeing is the "local not trusted" kind. In order to "trust" the SWF that issues the request you would need to use this page to confirm that the location where SWF comes from can communicate to the internet.
Doing so may be a hindrance for the user, but if this is the case, you could write the trust files on your own. Example
this question has been asked before but there is no conclusive answer.
I've written a Windows service in Delphi, which needs to generate a beep under certain condition. This works fine on XP, however fails in Windows 7 or 2008.
Note:
Beep can work if i create a console program instead of a service - using PC speakers.
Beep cannot work in a service even if i enable "allow service to interact with desktop" or even assign administrator rights to the service.
My question: Is there a way I can call beep API such that it works in a service? Thanks.
You can't do this in Vista and up. Services run in a different session and so don't have access to the speaker.
Update: Someone found a way here. it involves IOCTL, and is available to drivers and services.
Original answer:
The only way I know of to interact with the user would be to have your Service communicate with a small user-agent process which would be added to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentUser\Run to autorun.
This is the usual pattern in vista and win7 where no user interaction is possible directly from the service:
MyLittleService.exe has no access to the user. But it can communicate via a named pipe with a tray icon utility.
MyLittleTrayIcon.exe communicates to the service, and can also be told to signal the user with message boxes, beep via whatever method (windows sound effects probably would be better than trying to access the PC speaker which is not guaranteed to exist on every PC anymore), etc, and maybe even can be used to control the service (restart it, reload the configuration etc).
I need a background application to support my client application, which should always run on the client machine regardless of the main client application is running or not.
Windows Service was my first choice but problems I faced with Windows Service were: ease of control over windows service through main client application, release and installation of patches to the windows service and troubleshooting if windows service fails to run.
So, I started thinking for alternatives to the Windows Service and found that a Windows Forms application with NO visible forms can do it for me. This invisible app should start with system startup and keep running all the time, doing all the work that a Windows Service would do. But before I go deeper into the development, I want to explore the pros and cons of this approach.
Any suggestions/comments on this approach?
Your requirements are more suited for windows service. Main advantage with windows service is that it will start as soon as system comes up, irrespective of anybody is logged into system or not.
To sort out deployment issues, you build your business logic into separate assembly and call the necessary function withing windows service. This way you can deploy just the modified assembly.
Winform application with invisible form will not serve the purpose. HTH
That's not possible. User-mode applications must be started by a user, and will not continue to run when that user logs off. That's the purpose of the SessionEnding event: to allow you to shut down your app gracefully when the user logs off or the computer is shutting down. You can't just start something at system startup and keep it running all the time.
You need a Windows Service for that. But you should be aware that under Windows Vista and later, a service cannot interact directly with the user. They run in a separate process and are restricted from displaying their own UI. It's not clear from the question exactly what your needs are, but this is an important limitation of a Windows Service that is worth considering. A proper design really shouldn't require this, but there are apparently a lot of people to whom this new, more secure behavior is a real surprise. I explain this in more detail in related answers to this question and this other question.
Does anyone have a good guide to capabilities of Windows Services under XP? In particular, I am trying to find out what happens when a program being run as a service tries to open windows, but hasn't been given permission to interact with the desktop.
Basically, I have a program that is/was a GUI application, that should be able to run as a service for long term background processing. Rewriting the program to not display the GUI elements when doing background processing is a major effort, so I'd like to see if there is just a way to ignore the UI elements. It is sort of working now, as long as too many windows aren't opened. I'm trying to figure out what limits I might be running into. Ideally, there would be an MSDN page that discusses this, but I've had no luck finding one yet.
Generally, services should be designed to not have any visible UI. The entire point of a service is to run in the background, without UI, unattended. (Think SQL Server, IIS, etc.)
In most scenarios, a separate application controls the service's operation, should a GUI be needed. (Continuing the samples I just mentioned, SQL Server Management Studio, IIS Manager, etc.) These separate applications configure and manipulate the service (and occasionally, if needed, bounce said service).
If your service requires occasional UI, and said UI can't be isolated to a control app, then you probably should reconsider the fact that you're using a service to begin with. Perhaps a UI application which resides in the system notification area is the right pattern to use? (E.G., Windows Live Communicator.)
A service in Microsoft Windows is a program that runs whenever the computer is running the operating system. It does not require a user to be logged on. Services are needed to perform user-independent tasks such as directory replication, process monitoring, or services to other machines on a network, such as support for the Internet HTTP protocol
Usually it is implemented as a console application that runs in the background and performs tasks that don't require user interaction.
The installed services can be configured through the Services applet, available from
Control Panel --> Administrative Tools in Windows 2000/XP.
Services can be configured to start automatically when operating system starts, so you dont have to start each of them manually after a system reboot.
Creating a Simple Service - MSDN Article
Writing Windows Services Made easy - Code Project Article
Five Steps to Writing Windows Services in C - DevX Article
If you should be thinking of eventually migrating to a newer OS such as Vista or Server 2008, you will find that you cannot give a service permission to interact with the desktop at all. Therefore, from the point of view of forwards compatibility, you should design your service to not require it.
A service in Windows XP can interact with the Desktop if its "Allow Service to Interact with Desktop" property (MMC -> service properties -> Log On tab) is checked. It is also possible to do so by doing the following:
hWinstation = OpenWindowStation("winsta0", FALSE, MAXIMUM_ALLOWED);
SetProcessWindowStation(hWinstation);
hDesktop = OpenDesktop("default", 0, FALSE, MAXIMUM_ALLOWED);
SetThreadDesktop(hDesk);
But be aware that presenting UI from a service process in Windows XP will almost always lead to a security problem (see Shatter attack). You should try to break out the UI part of your application from the service.
Usually the service won't have permission to write to the window station and desktop, so it will fail; even running applications that load user32.dll can fail simply because user32 has initialization code that wants to talk to the window station and can't get access to it unless the service is running as an administrator.