Application Startup on System Boot (Screen Capture Applications)

A common question is whether the application can be run as a Windows Service in order to operate continuously in the background.

It is important to understand the following:

By design, a Windows Service cannot access the user desktop.
For security reasons, services run in an isolated environment (Session 0) and have no access to the interactive user session.

Because of this limitation, applications that use:

screen / desktop capture

GPU acceleration

graphical user interface (UI)

cannot work correctly when running as a Windows Service.

✅ Recommended approach: Auto-start in the user session

The correct and supported solution is to run the application in the user session using Windows Task Scheduler.

Benefits:

full access to the user desktop and GPU

screen capture works correctly

UI and system tray are available

stable and fully supported by Windows

? How to enable auto-start

Open Task Scheduler

Select Create Task

Set the trigger to At log on

Enable Run with highest privileges

Add an action Start a program and select the application executable

After this, the application will automatically start each time the user logs in.

ℹ Note

Running as a Windows Service is suitable only for headless applications that do not require desktop access or UI.
For screen capture applications, Task Scheduler is the correct and recommended solution.