Have you tried the sc / service controller util? Type sc create at a command line, and it will give you the help entry. I think I’ve done this in the past for Subversion and used this article as a reference: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion/trunk/notes/windows-service.txt
Both System.Timers.Timer and System.Threading.Timer will work for services. The timers you want to avoid are System.Web.UI.Timer and System.Windows.Forms.Timer, which are respectively for ASP applications and WinForms. Using those will cause the service to load an additional assembly which is not really needed for the type of application you are building. Use System.Timers.Timer like the following … Read more
You don’t need installutil.exe and probably you don’t even have rights to redistribute it. Here is the way I’m doing it in my application: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Configuration.Install; using System.IO; using System.Linq; using System.Reflection; using System.ServiceProcess; using System.Text; static void Main(string[] args) { if (System.Environment.UserInteractive) { string parameter = string.Concat(args); switch (parameter) { … Read more
To check a service’s state, use sc query <SERVICE_NAME>. For if blocks in batch files, check the documentation. The following code will check the status of the service MyServiceName and start it if it is not running (the if block will be executed if the service is not running): for /F “tokens=3 delims=: ” %%H … Read more
make sure the service is stopped, the services control panel is closed, and no open file handles are open by the service. Also make sure ProcessExplorer is not running.
If the service starts and stops like that, it means your code is throwing an unhandled exception. This is pretty difficult to debug, but there are a few options. Consult the Windows Event Viewer. Normally you can get to this by going to the computer/server manager, then clicking Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> Application. … Read more
Some more detail for completeness in case it helps someone… Note that the most common reason for this exception these days is attempting to load a 32 bit-specific (/platform:x86) DLL into a process that is 64 bit or vice versa (viz. load a 64 bit-specific (/platform:x64) DLL into a process that is 32 bit). If … Read more
I realize this post is old, but there’s no marked solution and I just wanted to throw in how I resolved this. The first Error 5: Access Denied error was resolved by giving permissions to the output directory to the NETWORK SERVICE account. The second Started and then stopped error seems to be a generic … Read more
Update: Nearly four years after my original answer and this answer is very out of date. Since TopShelf came along Windows Services development got easy. Now you just need to figure out how to support failover… Original Answer: I’m really not a fan of Windows Scheduler. The user’s password must be provided as @moodforall points … Read more
In your Installer class, add a handler for the AfterInstall event. You can then call the ServiceController in the event handler to start the service. using System.ServiceProcess; public ServiceInstaller() { //… Installer code here this.AfterInstall += new InstallEventHandler(ServiceInstaller_AfterInstall); } void ServiceInstaller_AfterInstall(object sender, InstallEventArgs e) { ServiceInstaller serviceInstaller = (ServiceInstaller)sender; using (ServiceController sc = new ServiceController(serviceInstaller.ServiceName)) … Read more