Windows: Running an AutoIt script to launch a GUI app - on a server, when no one is logged in

Posted by mrled on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by mrled
Published on 2009-07-29T06:54:23Z Indexed on 2010/04/09 17:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 420

Filed under:

Windows

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autoit

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windows-server-2003

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scheduled-task

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remote-desktop

I want to run an AutoIt script every day at 1:00 AM on a Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition. Since this is a server, obviously there is rarely someone sitting there logged in at the console, so the procedure needs to account for this.

The AutoIt script in question launches and sends keypresses to a GUI app, so the process needs to include creating some sort of session for the user running the schedule task.

Is there a way to do this?

I can't just use scheduled tasks run the AutoIt script when no one is logged in - if I do, it fails to launch at all.
I thought that I might be able to create an RDP session and run the scheduled task as that user, inside that session, but I haven't found a way to create an RDP session without launching mstsc.exe -- which is itself a GUI app, and I have the same problem again.

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