Running remote GUI app in Powershell

Question

We have a custom comonent that wraps some of the functionality of powershell so it can be used frim BizTalk 2006. For most operations (checking a file path, copy or move a

Answer 1

Since I came across this recently, here is my solution using Discord's suggestion of adding a remote task. I preferred the "hack" over having to setup a separate tool.

function Start-Process-Active
{
    param
    (
        [System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.PSSession]$Session,
        [string]$Executable,
        [string]$Argument,
        [string]$WorkingDirectory,
        [string]$UserID,
        [switch]$Verbose = $false

    )

    if (($Session -eq $null) -or ($Session.Availability -ne [System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.RunspaceAvailability]::Available))
    {
        $Session.Availability
        throw [System.Exception] "Session is not availabile"
    }

    Invoke-Command -Session $Session -ArgumentList $Executable,$Argument,$WorkingDirectory,$UserID -ScriptBlock {
        param($Executable, $Argument, $WorkingDirectory, $UserID)
        $action = New-ScheduledTaskAction -Execute $Executable -Argument $Argument -WorkingDirectory $WorkingDirectory
        $principal = New-ScheduledTaskPrincipal -userid $UserID
        $task = New-ScheduledTask -Action $action -Principal $principal
        $taskname = "_StartProcessActiveTask"
        try 
        {
            $registeredTask = Get-ScheduledTask $taskname -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
        } 
        catch 
        {
            $registeredTask = $null
        }
        if ($registeredTask)
        {
            Unregister-ScheduledTask -InputObject $registeredTask -Confirm:$false
        }
        $registeredTask = Register-ScheduledTask $taskname -InputObject $task

        Start-ScheduledTask -InputObject $registeredTask

        Unregister-ScheduledTask -InputObject $registeredTask -Confirm:$false
    }

}

Answer 2

Using standard PowerShell methods (WinRM, WMI) you can't launch applications with GUI. The only solution I know about is to use PsExec from SysInternals (or similar tools). It can launch applications which present GUI to the user. Your command line will look like this:

& ".\psexec" -accepteula -i "\\computername" -u "domain\username" -p "password" "command line"

• -accepteula — silently accept EULA.
• -i — allow GUI.

Other solutions are more hacky, including remote adding of tasks to the scheduler.