Running Process Lasso w/o Terminal Services enabled?

Although the product warns about this repeatedly, I am going to issue a more strong extra warning: Please turn on Terminal Services when using Process Lasso. This services is enabled (Manual start) by default in Windows, does no harm, is necessary for 'Fast user switching', has low overhead, and generally just needs to be enabled. The only users who have it disabled are those who have tweaked their systems with special utilities.

The side-effects of not having it enabled are simply growing increasingly problematic to handle, and I'm uncomfortable with them. Process Lasso already operates with the bare minimum, not mandating Performance Counters like most similar programs.

If Process Lasso has not warned you about this (repeatedly), then it is NOT an issue for you -- so no need to go and check. For Vista+, Terminal Services was renamed to Remote Desktop Services and always going to be available, so shouldn't be an issue.

What's up with this? Well, Terminal Services (now Remote Desktop Services) provides the facility for multiple users to be logged in at once. In Vista+, system services are isolated into a special user session, which is why this service will always be on - it MUST be to facilitate this system service isolation. Process Lasso is designed to work with multiple users, and needs to be able to identify the session and user name. Having to continually add exceptions in cases where the user name can not be retrieved is bothersome, though I do continue to do this, and regression test in environments without Terminal Services enabled.