How do I get the currently-logged username from a Windows service in .NET?

Solution 1:

This is a WMI query to get the user name:

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT UserName FROM Win32_ComputerSystem");
ManagementObjectCollection collection = searcher.Get();
string username = (string)collection.Cast<ManagementBaseObject>().First()["UserName"];

You will need to add System.Management under References manually.

Solution 2:

If you are in a network of users, then the username will be different:

Environment.UserName

Will Display format : 'Username', rather than

System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent().Name

Will Display format : 'NetworkName\Username'

Choose the format you want.

Solution 3:

ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT UserName FROM Win32_ComputerSystem") solution worked fine for me. BUT it does not work if the service is started over a Remote Desktop Connection. To work around this, we can ask for the username of the owner of an interactive process that always is running on a PC: explorer.exe. This way, we always get the currently Windows logged-in username from our Windows service:

foreach (System.Management.ManagementObject Process in Processes.Get())
{
    if (Process["ExecutablePath"] != null && 
        System.IO.Path.GetFileName(Process["ExecutablePath"].ToString()).ToLower() == "explorer.exe" )
    {
        string[] OwnerInfo = new string[2];
        Process.InvokeMethod("GetOwner", (object[])OwnerInfo);

        Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Windows Logged-in Interactive UserName={0}", OwnerInfo[0]));

        break;
    }
}

Solution 4:

Modified code of Tapas's answer:

Dim searcher As New ManagementObjectSearcher("SELECT UserName FROM Win32_ComputerSystem")
Dim collection As ManagementObjectCollection = searcher.[Get]()
Dim username As String
For Each oReturn As ManagementObject In collection
    username = oReturn("UserName")
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