Re: "multi user" in Windows 2000

From: Kurt Barthelmess (kbarthelmess_at_compuserve.com)
Date: 11/15/03 

Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 18:50:16 GMT

Thomas Mueller <news@s2h.cx> wrote:

>a customer showed me something I believed to be impossible up to now,
>something he called "multi user" capability.
>
>He started a program on a windows 2000 box, logged off without closing the
>program first, logged on with a differen user account and immediately got
>the program's window back without starting it and in the same state as
>before. According to him it is a feature of this particular program and he
>asked me whether one of our programs could be changed to have the same
>feature.
>
>I am sure it was Windows 2000 professional, not XP or 2003, he logged on
>locally and the PC was just a normal PC.
>
>Unfortunately I have no idea what to look for. Of course I could move part
>of the program into a service and on login start a thin GUI layer on top of
>it. Or a bit simpler, could save the state of the program, add it to the
>startup group and restore the state after another user logged in. But it
>didn't seem to work that way.

I don't think this is really a W2K vs. XP issue. I think the latter
has the ability to start an app as user A, logoff, logon as user B
(and not see the app), logoff, and logon as user A and find the app
still chugging along as it was. That's a different can of worms - the
app never shut down at all.

In W2K you can setup an app to always start for all users, either on a
onetime or regular basis, using the registry in addition to the
startup folder. But that would require saving your state, since you
will shutdown and restart.

I can think of one hiccup though - your app must not put or use any
files in the users' private folders - like My Documents. Otherwise you
won't be able "see" those when the next logon is done. And of course,
that violates the security guidelines. (Like anybody pays attention to
them anyhow<g>.)

Good luck.

Kurt

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