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Service to run installers with administrative privileges

I work at a company in which we need to restrict administrative access but allow the install of select programs with an easy way to update the list of programs. We want to develop a sort of appstore for everyone's PC where they can access the list of allowed apps and install what they need. We want to write this in C#.
To do this i have initially developed a windows service that starts as a localhost and runs at boot time giving it admin powers. I than use an application which talks to the windows service via a service hosted by the windows service. Long story short its told what app the user wants from the list and the list provides the file path for the application stored on a private repository.
This is a sort of very very early attempt at this and security is in mind and will be added once the concept functions.
Now onto the problem were having.... when we launch the installer using our service the installer window never launches in the desktop for the user to configure the options that could be in an installer. This of course poses a problem for a lot of our installers. After some quick research i understand why this happens due to what level the services run in the operating system and their inability to access the desktop.
My question is..... is there a way to solve this problem? a way to have a service launch at bootime and launch installers as an administrator on the users desktop? or is this too messy and creates too many issues? is there a way to do this with a console app or WPF?
Thanks in advance!

Indeed like what you found about windows services, I don't think this whole flow can work as a service. There seems to have some workarounds though, according to this thread: How can I run an EXE program from a Windows Service using C#?
If it's an app-store where users can choose what to install, maybe an application is all that's needed. Like you said:
I than use an application which talks to the windows service via a service hosted by the windows service. Long story short its told what app the user wants from the list and the list provides the file path for the application stored on a private repository.
Seems like an application can handle all the works here already.

Word Automation from IIS

I created a Windows application which starts a Word process (Microsoft.Office.Interopt.Word) with C#. I load two addins word.AddIns.Add(#"C:\temp\addin.dot", true);. This code works perfectly fine within my windows application.
To be able to start this process remotly, I created a MVC web application. The web app uses the same code, but it failes on the part where I load the addins:
error: Word cannot open this document template: (C:\temp\addin.dot)
The web application uses an application pool with administrator permissions and following settings:
Enable 32-Bit Applications: True
Load User Profile: True
Does anyone have an idea what the problem could be? Why does the same code behave differently on the web server?
Edit: The task manager shows me that the word process gets started with the correct user account. It is the same account as I use, when I start the windows application.

Web servers aren't meant to run user applications. Since you're using a COM reference, the library requires the application to be running to perform manipulations.
If you're looking to automate document generation/reading, my advise would be to use a library like DocX. This would enable you to work directly with the file format itself without bringing in COM references (the interop libraries).

Run desktop app via WEB app

I have desktop application that can be installed on the users computer with "setup" msi file like any other application.
I'm developing web application and I need somehow to integrate the desktop application with the web application. Web application is developed using PHP (desktop application is developed using C#), and when clicking on one button on the web application, the desktop application needs to be launched.
Is there a way of doing this? I was thinking about a few scenarios:
-Maybe if possible to install the app directly on the server and to launch it from there?
-Maybe to be required the user to have the app installed on his computer and to call the app from there?
If possible I would prefer to not use the second approach because it's better if the third party to not be involved - it will be more user friendly if the application is launched directly. But any help will be appreciated because at this point I'm not sure if that is possible to be done at all.

You can install app at server an run it with exec() or "`" operator - but to control gui of app you need to use some like autoit ant etc.

If you ultimately decide to require your users to have the client application installed and expect majority of the users to be on Windows, you could register your application to handle specific scheme and parse its command line when started. More on this here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa767914(v=vs.85).aspx
You'd register a custom scheme and then intercept in in the application's command line arguments. The whole URL will be passed as an argument, e.g.:
myapp://parameter1,parameter2
The browser will mostly ask whether or not the user trusts the application to handle this scheme with an option to remember this setting.
If you don't have access to the source code of the client application, you can develop a middleware, some sort of a launcher that handles the URL and then runs the client application after maybe modifying some configuration files based on the URL or otherwise controlling the third-party application to do as you with.
As for solution #1, I don't think C# matters if your application can run on Mono, so you should be able to just run it from PHP. However, this probably won't work on web hosting and you will have to get a VPS for that.

There are very good (security) reasons why it is hard to launch client-side processes from web browsers.
Do you have access to the source code of the C# app? If so, you could consider modifying it to take advantage of Microsoft ClickOnce deployment.
Some references:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t71a733d.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/t71a733d(v=vs.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6ae39a7c.aspx
http://www.codemag.com/Article/0902031
Here's an old article on deploying WinForms applications via ClickOnce with Visual Studio 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms953320.aspx

It can possibly be done with IIS but it can be cumbersome setting it up to run as the current user, especially since it would probably also need to run elevated for an app that needs to attach to the current user's desktop.
Easiest is to install a Windows LAMP distro (like WAMP: http://www.wampserver.com/en/) and then run the httpd.exe directly from an elevated (Admin) command prompt; do not run apache as a service!
Once you do this performing and exec("command"); call in php will bring up a desktop app as if it was invoked from an admin command prompt. Obviously you need to set up the apache server to be accessible from outside the local system, etc.

Running a C# console application as a Windows service

I have a basic C# console application that I would like to run as a Windows Service.
I have created the Windows service using sc create. This worked fine, and I can see my service under services.msc. When I try and start this service I get the following error:
Could not start the PROJECT service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.`
I read that this might be due to the service code taking longer than 30000 ms to execute. Therefore I removed the bulk of the code so that hardly anything is being executed.. yet the same error persists.
I am using .NET 3.5 for this project.
What would cause this?

You cannot just take any console application and run as Windows service. First you need to implement your service class that would inherit from ServiceBase, then in entry point (Main) you need to run the service with ServiceBase.Run(new YourService()). In your service class you need to define what happens when service starts and ends.
Ideally you should add ServiceInstaller to your assembly too. This way you will be able to preset your service properties, and use installutil.exe to install the service.

Walkthrough: Creating a Windows Service Application in the Component Designer is a walkthrough of how to create a service.

Not any old application can be run as a service, especially under more recent versions of Windows. They are expected to support certain functionality, respond to certain requests, and (again, under recent versions of Windows) not interact with the user directly.
If you want a service, write an application specifically designed to be a service.

I do not know what "sc create" is. But I know, using Visual Studio 2010, one can build a Windows service project. By the way, I have created a project of this kind and it does work well all the way.

why is this so? – wulfgar.pro Jun 3 '11 at 1:13
#WulfgarPro - because windows service application has a little
different architecture. You need to define what to do when service starts and ends. – Alex Aza Jun 3 '11 at 1:15
(Unfortunately I can't write a comment yet.)
It is because SCM (Service Control Manager) controls the service trough ServiceBase Class. If one would only need to define what it does when it starts and stops there would be no need for inheritance and overriding. One could simply create those two methods. Unfortunately there is a bit more work involved because ServiceBase contains a bit more functionality.

I have had great success with TopShelf. This is a nuget package that allows your .NET console app to also have the necessary Windows Service hooks such that it can happily run as either a console app (useful for debugging), or be installed as a Windows Service.

Windows Application in future to be controlled over browser

I am writing a Windows application using C#. I am planning on later to allow it to be controlled over the intranet using browser also. So in future we should be able to control it both using the local interface or over the intranet from the browser.
Is there any pre-defined architecture which will allow me to do this? What are the methods of achieving this? I am new to C#/.Net.
EDIT:
The windows application needs to access the communication ports extensively, and needs to be pretty stable and would probably run for some days together.
Thanks...

I can't tell you if a specific package exists that would ease the development. But, if I were to attempt it, after Googling and not finding something already available and meeting my needs, I would likely make my application a WCF host. Create service entry points to accept control messages remotely. You would also need some well-know location where to register your application so the remote system could find it. You should be sure to provide the user with a way of disabling the application remote control feature.
Your host interface will need to run on its own thread to remain performant. Since you are new to C#, and presumably windows forms application development, you will need to read up on how to properly talk to the GUI controls from a non-GUI thread.
Alternatively, you may want to implement your application as two distinct units, one with a GUI that does all the user interaction. It would form service requests to send to the host portion (with no GUI). Your app could then operate locally or be controlled remotely.

One solution I have used in a similar situation has three parts :-
1) Win32 (local) Service
Manages the COM ports and does whatever is necessary with the attached hardware
2) WinForms/Console Application
Runs on the local machine and communicates with the local service via named pipes or TCP.
3) Web Server + Web App
Runs on local or remote machine & communicates with local service.
The local user can shut the WinForms application down and log-off without affecting the service or remote users.

The newest version of Silverlight (the version that ships with Visual Studio 2010) allows what Microsoft terms the "Out Of Browser Experience" (OOB for short).
This allows the user to set up the Silverlight application as a desktop application as well as running through a browser.
Rudi Grobbler has just blogged about how he went about setting this up on his PC.