>>Jeff, Dmitry,
>>1) This is not correct. Services do not require any user to be logged in. They run under the System account. Rights to folders etc. can be set up as normal if needed.
Ok, maybe System is not actually a traditional user, but it really is a user.
IMO, it is bad practice to use System as a user account because System has complete access to the computer. Using System is a security risk.
From:
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/66743/system-account-in-windows#66747 The SYSTEM account is a pseudo-account similar, but not identical, to root on Linux. The two primary differences are that (a) the SYSTEM account is a service account, and therefore does not have a user profile, and (b) the Windows permissions model still enforces ACLs such that objects can exist which SYSTEM cannot directly access (though it can still grant a privilege to a token and gain access that way).
The SYSTEM account is the highest privilege level in the Windows user model. It exists to provide ownership to objects that are created before a normal user logs on, such as the Local Security Authority Subsystem (LSASS) and the Session Management Subsystem (SMSS).