PSExec to open interactive program with no user logged in

Question

I'm using PSExec to open certain server program that has some tiny gui, in another computer. Both local and target are Win7 64bit. I open it using

psexec \myothercomputer -u Me -p mypass -i -d -h myapp.exe

This works fine when I'm also logged into the other computer. But my idea of running this program in this way is to not have to log into that computer.

Today I tried to run the application without being logged in just to see what happened. I thought it was going to return an error. However PSExec returned my a Process ID.

Then I logged into that computer and to my surprise I had a sort of graphic "shadow", I mean, the shape of the application I tried to run!...... like if it did open it even though I was not logged in.

I thought it was a screen refresh problem and I tried several ways to make "awake" or interact with that app, it was not really correctly displayed. Using taskmanager, I noticed that the memory consumption for this app was to small to what it is supposed to be... so I guess at somepoint it just went wrong. And thats' what I really expect it, to go run.

Questions: Why PSExec successfully open an interactive application without being logged in? Why then, my interactive application fail to run properly?

Solution

according to the PSExec page, the -i [session] switch does this:

Run the program so that it interacts with the desktop of the specified session on the remote system. If no session is specified the process runs in the console session.

In your command you don't specify a session immediately after the -i as the manpages indicate.

I also note that you have -d specified. I don't think you can mix -i and -d, especially if the user is not logged in, becuase -i runs in the console session, but -d says don't use the console session to determine the process lifetime:

-d Don't wait for process to terminate (non-interactive).