hidden window for a service

I am trying to create a service that periodically captures and stores
images from an ethernet camera. Unfortunately, the API for the camera
requires the camera to be in "preview" mode (streaming video into
a window) before I can take a snapshot. So, ideally, I would like to
have a window, invisible and inaccessible to users, which I can use to
receive messages from the camera API. Is there an easy way to do this?
What about making such a window persist across user sessions?

This is all done on a 400MHz Pentium II running
windows 2000 Pro. The camera in question is the Veo
Observer. It's pretty cool, except the SDK is kind of
poorly commented and does not have all the features it
could have.

Thanks,

Igor.