Don't use ShellExecute on a windows Service

[Abaksoft]

Good moorning Friends,

Just wanted to advise.

- ShellExecute works fine on VCL Desktop applications only.

- ShellExecute does'nt work on a Windows Service !   

Because of Windows Security (Session0, Session 1)  introduced after Windows 7 

 

use instead CreateProcessAsUser  like this :

procedure TMainForm.RunApp(cmdLine, WorkDir: String);
var
  hToken: THandle;
  StartupInfo: TStartupInfo;
  ProcessInfo: TProcessInformation;
  res: boolean;

begin
   GetStartupInfo(StartupInfo);

   if WTSQueryUserToken(WtsGetActiveConsoleSessionID, hToken) then
   begin

    { 1. For an application.exe  (exemple : NotePad.exe)

     res := CreateProcessAsUser(hToken,
               PChar(Path_appName),
               PChar(cmdLine),
               nil,
               nil,
               False,
               CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE,
               nil,
               PChar(WorkDir),
               StartupInfo,
               ProcessInfo);
    }



    {2. For a DOS command line   (Example FireBird :
           cmdLine:='gbak.exe -user sysdba -pas masterkey -b -nt "D:\Base.fdb" "D:\toto.fbk" ';
           WorkDir:='C:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_2_5\bin';
    }
     res := CreateProcessAsUser(hToken,
               Nil,
               PChar('cmd.exe /C ' + cmdLine),
               nil,
               nil,
               True,
               CREATE_NO_WINDOW,
               nil,
               PChar(WorkDir),
               StartupInfo,
               ProcessInfo);


     if res then WaitForSingleObject(ProcessInfo.hProcess,INFINITE);
   end;

end;

That will save you much time

Regards.

[Tokay]

I think that you can just analize returned value of the ShellExecute to understand what happend

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/api/shellapi/nf-shellapi-shellexecutea