Login to system from service?

I have a windows service and want to automatically log a user into windows from it - I have seen this done with logmein etc...

I have looked into GINA and CredentialProviders, but haven't really found an article on how to do this; most forums just say "look into GINA and CredentialProviders"

I know the username I want to log in and the user will ALWAYS have no password.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kris

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I know the username I want to log in and the user will ALWAYS have no password

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Not make sense. If the Windows service is running then someone's already logged in. As there's no password involved, what need is their for this user to log in from a service rather than just being the user automatically logged in in order to start the service that you don't actually need because they're logged in already? Now I've even confused myself! :afrog:

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Originally Posted by dunfiddlin

If the Windows service is running then someone's already logged in.

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That's not true. The Windows services that are set to auto start will start when Windows starts regardless if you login or not.

Can't you simply setup the computer to auto login as this user? I've never dabbled with CredentialProviders and the SDK for it is all in C++ but the existing providers are just COM objects so I suppose you could use them from VB but I don't know enough about them to provide any more help.

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Originally Posted by Joacim Andersson

That's not true. The Windows services that are set to auto start will start when Windows starts regardless if you login or not.

Can't you simply setup the computer to auto login as this user? I've never dabbled with CredentialProviders and the SDK for it is all in C++ but the existing providers are just COM objects so I suppose you could use them from VB but I don't know enough about them to provide any more help.

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.. because I don't want the box to auto login - and I want it so that when it's locked it can be logged in with a device that isn't a keyboard or a mouse.

Any more ideas?
Kris

That sounds as if you want to create your own credential provider. I'm not 100% sure but I think you need to turn to C++ for that. Have you tried downloading the SDK?

I was hoping that there were c++ GINA apps to do this that allowed API access to do what I want through managed code (pGINA does this kind of stuff but doesn't allow for what I want ... it allows you to validate a login against other credentials, eg alowing a master password to unlock all accounts, but still requires user interaction)

Kris