If we right-click the shortcut of an exe file, there are options to run the program as 'Minimized', 'Maximized', or 'Normal window':
NirSoft's BulkFileChanger is able to do so too. But there's another option called 'Hidden':
When I run the programs as 'Hidden', they do not appear in my taskbar. Task Manager does show that the programs are running indeed.
How can I access / show those currently running 'Hidden' programs?
Also, exactly what does it mean to start main window as 'Hidden'?
What "Hidden" means is exactly what you observe, that you cannot see its GUI and it has no presence on the task-bar.
Nirsoft's nircmd allows you to hide, show and activate running windows. Use nircmd win show to reveal a hidden task, or nircmd win activate to show it and bring to foreground.
I find hidden windows most useful for background batch files, which would normally show up with a task-bar entry. If you want to interact with a task, don't hide it.
show doesn't work. I am able to hide and togglehide (which hides but never show), but once hidden, the processes never show up again. Is this a bug? Are you able to get a process hidden to show?
nircmd exec, but I don't use BulkFileChanger: since both are from the same source, I assume that the programs use the same hiding mechanism. I'm testing NirCmd 2.41 on Win8.1 and I use the ititle option to specify the window.
ititle works. This had to be a bug with process, because nircmd win togglehide process notepad.exe hides but don't show. Is the bug occuring on your setup too? After doing nircmd win togglehide process notepad.exe, the "Window" option is even greyed out in SysInternals process explorer: i.stack.imgur.com/QynqV.png
togglehide nor process options) and the process option works when hiding, but not when trying to show, whether the process name or the /PID format is used, so it seems like a bug. I had already noticed that tasks hidden by nircmd have the Window option greyed out in the Process Explorer context menu, as you have observed. Also, it appears that you can start hidden processes from Task Scheduler, but I've not tried this, so I don't know if they are hidden in the same way as nircmd hides tasks.