Response to: Initiate remote application/program to run

Revision 1
First, look how RDP service work. You can use it to launch some applications on the machine acting as a server. I'm not saying that you should use RDP. I'm just saying that to be able to run applications on the server on request of client, you apparently need to create a Windows Service (presumably, running with the "Auto" start-up option), which is a network service and which can take orders from the clients and launch applications on their behalf. As always with the custom network services, you will need to have your own application-level protocol, somewhat similar to RDP, only much simpler.

If you have any questions on how to proceed with this approach, I gladly explain more.

For now, you can start here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa984464%28v=vs.71%29.aspx[^].

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Services[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Desktop_Protocol[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_layer[^].

However, running the UI applications like Notepad make no sense at all. You will start it on the server side, so what? Don't think it can be shown on the client screen or something like that. If this is what you need, simply use RDP. There are a couple of good CodeProject articles where the authors present their own RDP clients. Using them, you will see how can you use RPD protocol in your own client-side application:
Remote Desktop using C#.NET[^],
Palantir - Remote Desktop Manager[^].

The second one, Palantir, is my favorite; it once helped me in the situation where the Microsoft client was failing to do the job.

—SA