Question

Well, Im trying to spawn a process from inside a thread spawned by a Windows Service. The goal being to read the output and printing to the window in focus — where cursor is. Probably a bad idea, I don’t know i’m not a c# programmer

Anywho spawning the process works when I call the function itself, but not when it’s called inside a running service. Is starting a process inside a service possible?

Process proc = new Process();
                proc.StartInfo.FileName = @"C:\file.bat";
                proc.StartInfo.RedirectStandardError = true;
                proc.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
                proc.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

                proc.Start();

                String outputMessage = proc.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
                proc.WaitForExit();

Answer 1

Starting a process from a service is certainly possible. However, services run inside session 0 and have no desktop. Interactive users run their desktops in a different session. Consequently it is very challenging to get a process up and running inside an interactive session when starting from a service.

For an illustration of the issues involved, and how tricky it is to get right, read this: Launching an interactive process from Windows Service in Windows Vista and later.

The simplest approach would be to separate your service into two distinct parts. One part runs as a service, and the other part runs as a windowless process in the interactive session. These two processes can communicate by whatever IPC mechanism you prefer. When the service wants to start a process it simply sends a message to its other half in the interactive session to request that the new process is started.