Disabling interactive services in windows 7. Interactive services detection: what is it and how to disable it
Sometimes trying to launch an old game or program will result in an error with the title "Detecting interactive services." The problem is infrequent, but annoying, and next we will look at its solution.
Let's start with the reasons for the failure. The fact is that in older versions of Windows (up to and including XP), the system contained components called “Interactive Services”, which allowed one or another program to create additional messages. Windows Vista and later do not have them, but do have a replacement service for backward compatibility. However, sometimes it only gets in the way, since the program can start without interactive services, so this element can be disabled to solve the problem.
- Open Start and follow the path "All programs" – "Service" – "Administration".
- A directory with shortcuts to administration tools will open - find the item "Services" and run it by double-clicking with the left mouse button.
- Once the list of services is displayed, find the entry in it . Select it, right-click, then select from the context menu "Stop".
- Call the service context menu again, but this time select "Properties".
- Refer to the drop down list "Startup type"– you should select an option "Stopped". Next, click the buttons "Apply" And "OK".
Restart your computer and the problem should be resolved.
Solving possible problems
Often, an attempt to fix the problem in question leads to additional failures. Let's look at the most common ones and suggest ways to eliminate them.
Services won't open
The most common additional error is the inability to open the snap-in "Services". In most cases, this means corruption of system files (which, by the way, may be the cause of the main problem that we are discussing in this article). Of course, the method of eliminating the problem would be to restore damaged components, but before doing this, you should check the system for viruses - it is possible that it was their activity that violated the integrity of the data.
After this, you can proceed to recovery.
After fixing the problem, other programs stopped starting
Disabling an element "Interactive Service Discovery" sometimes it leads to other programs, mostly also old ones, either not starting at all or working with errors. The only way to resolve this failure is to enable "Interactive Service Discovery"– follow the instructions above, only in step 4 select the option "Automatically". In the future, to avoid such problems, we recommend installing Windows XP on a virtual machine and working with problematic software from under it.
Conclusion
We looked at a way to fix the problem with the “Detection of interactive services” error on Windows 7. To summarize, we note that many old programs have more modern analogues, which often remain backward compatible with the working formats of the old ones, so using such software will be a compromise solution.
Some users have observed a certain error in the form of a system message on their computer. Find out what this error is and how to fix it in the article below.
To understand why this error appears, you first need to establish what kind of program is causing it. You can find out the path to the program by clicking on the Program Information link located at the bottom of the error window.
As can be seen from the error itself, it occurs due to partial incompatibility of the program with the Windows operating system.
What to do if the program is incompatible with Windows. In this case, you can use the program to run in compatibility mode for a particular operating system.
To run a program in compatibility mode, right-click on the program shortcut and select Properties.
In the properties window, go to the tab Compatibility and check the box opposite Run the program in compatibility mode .
You can also set the permission level to run this program as an administrator.
Another reason why the error may appear is that the so-called Interactive Service Detection service is running.
How to disable interactive services
In order to disable interactive services on your computer, press Control Panel → Administration → Services(even simpler - Start→ in the search bar enter Services).
In Windows Services, find . Double click on this service → in the line Startup type select Manually , and in the section State click Stop .
As an alternative method, you can reinstall the program. It may have been installed incorrectly earlier, resulting in the error The program running on this computer is trying to display a message. Or due to an incorrect program update.
Some users have observed a certain error in the form of a system message on their computer. Find out what this error is and how to fix it in the article below.
To understand why this error appears, you first need to establish what kind of program is causing it. You can find out the path to the program by clicking on the Program Information link located at the bottom of the error window.
As can be seen from the error itself, it occurs due to partial incompatibility of the program with the Windows operating system.
What to do if the program is incompatible with Windows. In this case, you can use the program to run in compatibility mode for a particular operating system.
To run a program in compatibility mode, right-click on the program shortcut and select Properties.
In the properties window, go to the tab Compatibility and check the box opposite Run the program in compatibility mode .
You can also set the permission level to run this program as an administrator.
Another reason why the error may appear is that the so-called Interactive Service Detection service is running.
How to disable interactive services
In order to disable interactive services on your computer, press Control Panel → Administration → Services(even simpler - Start→ in the search bar enter Services).
In Windows Services, find . Double click on this service → in the line Startup type select Manually , and in the section State click Stop .
As an alternative method, you can reinstall the program. It may have been installed incorrectly earlier, resulting in the error The program running on this computer is trying to display a message. Or due to an incorrect program update.
Your company's CFO sent you a simple email with a "small request": he wants a complete inventory of the computers in your company, including computer locations and information.
software installed on each computer. To the end of the week. This is necessary for the following reasons (select one or more).
- It's time to plan your budget for next year, and you need to determine the amount of funds allocated for software licensing.
- A software audit notification has been received and you must now confirm compliance by providing sufficient licenses for a specific product.
- The CEO has directed that IT infrastructure costs be reduced, and he believes that application standardization is one way to achieve this goal.
What should you do?
Information technology asset management has evolved over the past ten years, with organizations now focusing on effectively managing software assets. The main reason for this is that software is now a much larger investment than before, and there are also growing security, policy and legal issues that need to be addressed. The possibility of being found non-compliant and having to pay large fees or fines on a “true-up” basis has further increased the need for accurate license management.
Large organizations typically use software management tools and resources. These tools are often large, comprehensive solutions designed not only to track hardware and software resources, but also to manage software installation on workstations, monitor performance, and other production functions. Where does that leave organizations that cannot implement such solutions, or that lack the resources and expertise to implement and manage such complex solutions?
Meeting the needs of both large and small businesses has been one of the core ideas behind Software as a Service (SaaS). Microsoft's Software plus Services strategy combines efforts to develop service-based solutions to effectively manage software assets. One of the first such services, Microsoft® Asset Inventory Service, will be released to Software Assurance customers as part of the Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance later this year.
The Asset Inventory Service (AIS), shown in Fig. 1 is an easy to deploy and use hosted service to collect information about the software installed on your organization's computers. This information is accessed through browser-based reporting, and the next version of the service plans to include the ability to analyze Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement deployments.
Rice. 1 Microsoft Asset Inventory Service
The nature of interactive services
What are the reasons for using an interactive solution? There are several good reasons, including immediate availability of updates and new versions, ease of implementation, and reduced deployment and management costs.
Online services are dynamic: just like a web page, content and functionality can be continually updated by providers to improve the user experience and reflect ongoing changes in technology. This provides an exceptional level of flexibility and allows software vendors to provide cutting-edge features, solutions and expertise that enable administrators to manage desktop systems much more ahead of the curve.
The advantage of online services is their ubiquitous availability. Modern information technology environments range from fully networked computers with direct connections to network resources to remote users and branch offices with access to resources via the Internet from a variety of locations. Add in mobile users who almost always connect to your network through web-based email programs, and a complete inventory of your company's information technology assets becomes a very difficult task. This has historically been a major problem with inventory tools, especially on-premises solutions that lacked support for remote/non-network cases.
However, most, if not all, of your computers have Internet connectivity, so you can use online services to manage them without having to implement special measures to provide access to native client-server solutions. The management service is accessed over a secure Internet connection, so your managed account can manage computers from anywhere with Internet access.
Deployment is very simple; to get started, you only need to create an account in the online system. You won't need servers for your environment or invest in new network infrastructure and software platforms. All this means reduced capital investment and administrative costs. Technical support is also simplified as the organization does not have to worry about maintenance and upgrades as new versions of the service are now part of the service agreement.
Using the service
Promoting the development of the online community Asset Inventory Service and System Center Online foster a successful community of users who can influence the evolution of online services. A software directory (wiki style) is a great example of what a user community can contribute to; Users of the service can offer suggestions, corrections and advice.
In the future, the catalog itself may also become a valuable source of information for end users exploring software purchasing options. The service may collect a variety of anonymous statistics to determine software and hardware adoption rates; the information collected will be useful to the end users involved in this work.
The community will also determine the overall direction of the service, providing feedback on prioritizing areas to address specific business needs.
To provide interactive desktop management services, the Microsoft System Center Online team is expanding the platform to not only support the Asset Inventory Service in the short term, but also future services. The service is designed with security, scalability and reliability in mind. AIS is a complete hosted solution with all servers located in Microsoft computer centers. To deploy the solution, customers need to install a small program on all client computers that must be included in the managed inventory.
The Asset Inventory Service is managed by the Microsoft.com team. It is a multi-owner web application that uses web services to ensure the privacy and security of individual users' data; A combination of client and web applications is used to store customer data. Agents running on the client node upload the software inventory to Microsoft's IIS Web service. SSL with mutual authentication protects client data, communication between client and service, and the AIS Web site; For storage purposes, the host uses SQL Server™.
Users sign in to the service to manage accounts and view reports using Windows Live™ ID accounts. The customer's Web site also uses SSL to protect customer data and uses SQL Server Reporting Services to generate reports. The SQL Server databases are mirrored and load balancing is used for high availability of the Web sites. In addition, inventory data is divided into scalable blocks for even greater availability.
Subscription to the Asset Inventory Service is accomplished by purchasing Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack licenses through your Microsoft Volume Licensing Agreement. You can then activate your Asset Inventory Service subscription on the Microsoft Volume Licensing services website at licensing.microsoft.com. To successfully authenticate and register with AIS, you must have a valid Windows Live ID.
During activation, the license administrator designates the Asset Inventory Service subscription administrator by specifying a Windows Live ID. The subscription administrator registers with AIS using a Windows Live ID and completes the AIS activation process. The administrator can then add other users to the service by specifying their Windows Live ID.
Inventory agent
The client, installed on all computers, is a small, easy-to-deploy agent packaged as a Windows® Installer (MSI) package. The agent installer is downloaded and client deployment is managed from the online service. (Figure 2 shows the management and support interface.) The agent works similar to the Windows Update Agent in that it also communicates regularly with System Center Online servers. The purpose of this is to update the inventory profile at a certain frequency and update itself when a new version of the agent is available.
Rice. 2 Account Management and Client Deployment
The inventory is scheduled to start automatically, no user intervention is required. It is also possible to run the inventory manually if necessary. The first time an agent contacts a service, the public key infrastructure (PKI) certificate credentials are used to provide a user ID to the service and create a unique ID for the computer running the agent. The agent itself, which runs only on a schedule, requires no user interaction, so it requires minimal resources and runs in the background. The size of the downloaded files is small so as not to cause “bursts” in network traffic.
The inventory process itself is simple and efficient. The agent searches registry entries, MSI databases, and other sources for installation information, unlike traditional management systems that reduce user productivity by searching and resolving all executable files on a computer. This process returns software inventory data with friendly names and metadata to identify and classify items so they can be used in various license management activities.
Reporting Services
Once inventory data is loaded, the process of identifying and cataloging it occurs in preparation for displaying the data in reports. Inventory data is mapped to a central software catalog that categorizes the data. This is one of the most important features of the service: inventory data from all clients provides a central software catalog with unique signatures. The Microsoft development team reviews non-confidential and unclassified software signatures and, using a structured taxonomy of software categories and families, classifies the applications represented by the signatures according to their type and functionality. The purpose of these categories is to provide higher level of awareness reporting, allowing users to quickly select the types of software they need, such as antivirus applications only.
Software signatures are also used to consolidate data displayed in reports. For example, there may be a number of versions of the publisher name - one application may report the publisher name as Contoso Software and another as Contoso, so there may be two names in the report. Consolidating publisher and application titles improves the accuracy of reporting on these criteria and the relevance of the data displayed.
Once the user has selected the desired dataset using filters and groups, report content can be exported to a variety of supported formats using SQL Server Reporting Services, including CSV files, Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets, and PDF files (see Figure 3). This allows for additional external analysis and processing or use of the report as input for other enterprise management systems.
Rice. 3 Inventory report
A future feature of the service will improve the way Microsoft handles licenses, making the process much easier for users. Users will be given the option to download Volume Licensing Agreement pairs, which will then be used to obtain information about license types from the Microsoft Customer License Information Store. This license entitlement data will then be used to generate a report that will include information about all installed licensed Microsoft software and the number of associated licenses.
Using the product ID, which is also obtained during inventory, installed software can be classified by channel: volume license, retail license, and OEM license. This feature is planned to be included in the next version of the Asset Inventory Service.
Prospects
Asset Inventory Service is the first product from System Center Online, but it is by no means the last. As mentioned earlier, the System Center Online team has a long-term goal of providing comprehensive desktop management services that are fully accessible as an online service.
Possible products currently under consideration include information technology asset management for hardware and software inventory and tracking, software distribution and release to provide capabilities similar to Windows Online Software Update Services, and hybrid interactive/local services. We are also exploring whether other desktop management services can handle this type of situation.
For more information about the Microsoft Asset Inventory Service, visit
Many users on all kinds of computer Internet forums complain that in a certain situation, for no apparent reason, for no apparent reason, some kind of notification appears on the screen, in the header of which there is the inscription “Detection of interactive services”, and What follows is an even more incomprehensible description. Let's try to look at what it is all about, how to get rid of a constantly appearing message by disabling the corresponding component.
This can be done quite simply. But the most important question is how advisable it is to carry out such actions. Let's consider all possible situations, and only after that each user will be able to make a conclusion about whether to disable this service or not. But first things first.
What does "Interactive Service Discovery" mean?
Let's start by understanding the essence of how the Windows component itself works. In a sense, it is responsible for the compatibility of legacy software with new operating systems. However, this is not exactly running applications in compatibility mode, although it is very similar. Here the situation is somewhat different.
Let's assume you have some kind of program that was originally designed to modify the Windows Server 2008 R2 server operating system. A system administrator is migrating a server to Windows Server 2012 and is trying to run an application that worked in the previous version of the OS, but does not work in the new one. This is where the detection of interactive services comes into play, since the interface of the application itself can be displayed in the new OS only in the so-called zero session mode (during autostart). The new system cannot display the program interface. And that's why the interactive service discovery process is performed for compatibility.
In general, as the official description of the service states, this component warns the user about the need to manually grant permissions to display dialog boxes of launched applications, and only as they appear.
But such situations occur not only on server operating systems. There are many options for the appearance of such notifications. Sometimes the message window may indicate that some program requires permission to terminate the process, and the reason, again, is the problem of partial incompatibility of the application being launched with the version of the operating system. But there are worse situations.
Options for the Interactive Services Discovery window to appear
Not to mention the manual or automatic launch of programs of outdated versions, quite often you can see a window appear even when starting desktop versions, which incredibly irritates users.
For example, in Windows 7, detection of interactive services is triggered just after the system and its components are fully loaded. Why is that? There is no exact answer to this question, although it can be assumed that the user somehow activated this service, or installed clearly outdated programs on the system. It is very possible that the uninstallation was not completed in full, and the residual components of the deleted application remained in startup (although they may not be displayed in the standard section).
Disabling a service through the appropriate section
Now let's see how to disable this component. There are two main methods you can use to do this. The first option is to perform the necessary actions in the services section. You can get into it in the fastest way possible through the “Run” console, in which you enter the services.msc command.
Here you need to find the corresponding component, enter the parameter editing window through a double click or the RMB menu, and then press the stop button to start.
What launch type should I install?
The second point when solving the problem of how to disable a service is related to the choice of start type. There are two options here: either disable the component by setting the appropriate value, or use manual launch. What to prefer?
In this situation, the user needs to decide whether in the future he is going to use old software products that are incompatible with the system installed on his computer. If yes, the startup type is set to manual. Otherwise, the service is disabled completely.
Disabling a service through the registry
Also, detection of interactive services can be disabled in the system registry. The editor itself is called through the program execution menu with the regedit command.
In it you need to use the HKLM branch, go through the SYSTEM and CurrentControlSet sections to the Control directory, and open the Windows subfolder in it. On the right is the NoInterectiveServices key. By entering the editing menu via the RMB menu or double click, the parameter value should be changed from zero to one. If you still need to run old programs, you should not change the parameter.
Note: in order not to spend a long time navigating through registry sections, you can immediately search for a key by name, using either the “File” menu or the combination Ctrl + F. There is only one such parameter in the registry, so there should be no problems.
Instead of a total
Finally, it is worth noting that the system component described above, present in all relatively new Windows operating systems, is a unique tool because it allows you to run any, even the oldest, software product in their environment. If you use the start of such applications in compatibility mode when activating the corresponding item in the shortcut properties menu, nothing may work, because the outdated systems for which the desired program was designed are simply not in the list. And this component makes it possible to use them almost one hundred percent. Another thing is that current users never actually use such applications, so, of course, they will not need this service under any circumstances.
But system administrators of enterprises that use outdated software (for example, Effect Office 2.8) will find this service useful. In a sense, it will even become the only panacea that will help avoid compatibility problems. There is certainly no reason for them to deactivate such a unique component (an “adapter”, if you will).
