Question

Is it possible to detect that a specific user has an open session on a computer and to open a process in that session so that the application can be interacted with by the user using PowerShell remoting?

How would I go around detecting which users have sessions open on the machine and what their state is (active, idle, disconnected, etc…)? How would I launch an application within one of those sessions?

UPDATE
I have found that you can identify the session ID a process is running in:

PS > ( Get-Process notepad ).SessionId
1

I can’t seem to find anyway to specify the session ID for a process when you start it though.

Answer 1

Powershell cannot do this, but microsoft’s (previously sysinternal’s) tool PSEXEC can do this. Take a look at the -i parameter:

 -i         Run the program so that it interacts with the desktop of the
            specified session on the remote system. If no session is
            specified the process runs in the console session.