writing programs for when there is no user logged on

let first pre-frame this discussion by saying this is probably asking a wide-open question, and one with many different views. in fact it would be best to gather a lot of different views on this, i think.

I have a client who has a windows 200 machine and everynight wants me to run a program that i have written. this program must run everynight, whether there is somebody logged onto the machine or not.

I (obviously :) ) know how to write a program that when somebody clicks on a .exe file it runs, but how do i create one that runs in the background all the time - even if the machine is sitting at the "press ctl+alt+del to logon screen"?

i am kinda guessing that it requires me to write some kind of service, but this would be first for me (although there always has to be a first time for everything :o )

the more ideas the better, so don't be shy......

Its VERY easy to write a service in .NET. Depending on what the application does there maybe be some trouble though. You may have noticed some questions popping up about things not working as they should from a service, but really the only way to know is to try it. A service also has some limiting rules, like no user interface, and limited start up parameters. There is a good 'How To' article in the help files.

Of course if you already have an exe that does what you need and if it doesn't require user interaction then you can just use the Scheduled Tasks bit in Windows to run it at a certain time. That would probably be the easiest.