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SMS Interactive Service

Question:

Having some issues when running a WinBatch with SMS's(2003) Administrative rights. The program runs on the PC and is listed in running process, but the program is 'invisible' to the user.(No dialogs or user interface shows on screen). If we run with user rights, the program works as expected Any ideas to work around this, or what is happening?

Answer:

How exactly is SMS running your script in these two different situations?

My gut instinct tells me that you've got an issue involving services vs. interactive applications & access to the interactive desktop. Usually, however, what is observed in that sort of situation is that a script running as a service under the "Local System" account has access to the desktop, while a script running as a service under a specific user account does not have access to the desktop. Your situation sounds like the reverse of that, though.

Please provide some more information about which mode the script is being run in [service mode vs. interactive application].

User Reply:

Your answer got me thinking and gave me the answer! SMS has a secondary check box 'Allow user interaction'. We missed that, and by checking it, everything worked great.

P.S. It was running as a service.

Answer:

That's kind of what I thought might be happening. When running with admin rights, SMS runs as a service and it runs your script as a subprocess, which means that your script is in a service mode logon session even if the script itself isn't installed & run as a native NT service. So, that check box becomes very important. Also, when SMS runs it as an interactive user, it would appear to be using some sort of "agent" program running in the user's interactive logon session to run the script underr the users's credentials. That, too, allows for interaction with the desktop but the script runs as an interactive application then and not as a subprocess of a service mode program. 
Article ID:   W16503

File Created: 2005:02:18:12:21:04
Last Updated: 2005:02:18:12:21:04