We have an application which performs some logging and reporting, and it has to stay running continually in order to function (the developers haven't heard of Windows services, evidently). Normally we just leave them running in a disconnected Remote Desktop session so that we can connect remotely to check stats, reports, etc. It works well enough.
When the server reboots, however, these applications aren't automatically started. This can be a problem, since the data that's being logged is highly temporal in nature, and comes from a different server. Is there some way to have this logging server automatically log in to a disconnected RDP session at startup? I've done automatic console logins before, but never RDP. If that's possible, then I can just put the necessary programs into Startup.
Edited to add:
One of the various application-to-service conversion wrappers might work, but we specifically want to keep the interface available for whenever somebody connects to work with the program. It's just that it also has to stay open even when nobody is actively using it, and when the server reboots, such as to apply OS updates, the program isn't restarted automatically.
Best Answer
One of the elements of our phone system has a very similar issue.
Assuming 2008 is like 2003 You can do an automatic console login to start your applications and connect to that existing session via RDP remotely once it is running. Not ideal but functional.
@Bart's solution is really the best route to go if you can make it happen. The phone system issue I mentioned had some weird GUI hook issues that stopped that from working in my case.