Professional C# 4 and .NET 4

Chapter 25. Windows Services

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• The architecture of a Windows Service

• Windows Services installation programs

• Windows Services control programs

• Troubleshooting Windows Services

Windows Services are programs that can be started automatically at boot time without the need for anyone to log on to the machine. The following section explains the architecture of Windows Services. The rest of the chapter shows you how to create, monitor, control, and troubleshoot your Windows Services.

WHAT IS A WINDOWS SERVICE?

Windows Services are applications that can be automatically started when the operating system boots. These applications can run without having an interactive user logged on to the system and do some processing in the background.

For example, on a Windows Server, system networking services should be accessible from the client without a user logging on to the server. And on the client system, services allow you to get a new software version from the Internet or to do some file cleanup on the local disk.

You can configure a Windows Service to run from a specially configured user account or from the system user account — a user account that has even more privileges than that of the system administrator.

Note

Unless otherwise noted, when we refer to a service, we are referring to a Windows Service.

Here are a few examples of services:

• Simple TCP/IP Services is a service program that hosts some small TCP/IP servers: echo, daytime, quote, and others.

• World Wide Web Publishing Service ...