Professional C# 5.0 and .NET 4.5.1

Chapter 27Windows Services

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• The architecture of a Windows Service
• Windows Services installation programs
• Windows Services control programs
• Troubleshooting Windows Services

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/go/procsharp on the Download Code tab. The code is in the chapter 27 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

• Quote Server
• Quote Client
• Quote Service
• Service Control

WHAT IS A WINDOWS SERVICE?

Windows Services are programs that can be started automatically at boot time without the need for anyone to log on to the machine. If you need to startup programs without user interaction or need to run under a different user than the interactive user, which can be a user with more privileges, you can create a Windows Service. Some examples could be a WCF host (if you can’t use IIS for some reason), a program that caches data from a network server, or a program that re-organizes local disk data in the background.

This chapter starts with looking at the architecture of Windows Services, creates a Windows Service that hosts a networking server, and gives you information to start, monitor, control, and troubleshoot your Windows Services.

As previously mentioned, 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, ...