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Service to run installers with administrative privileges

I work at a company in which we need to restrict administrative access but allow the install of select programs with an easy way to update the list of programs. We want to develop a sort of appstore for everyone's PC where they can access the list of allowed apps and install what they need. We want to write this in C#.
To do this i have initially developed a windows service that starts as a localhost and runs at boot time giving it admin powers. I than use an application which talks to the windows service via a service hosted by the windows service. Long story short its told what app the user wants from the list and the list provides the file path for the application stored on a private repository.
This is a sort of very very early attempt at this and security is in mind and will be added once the concept functions.
Now onto the problem were having.... when we launch the installer using our service the installer window never launches in the desktop for the user to configure the options that could be in an installer. This of course poses a problem for a lot of our installers. After some quick research i understand why this happens due to what level the services run in the operating system and their inability to access the desktop.
My question is..... is there a way to solve this problem? a way to have a service launch at bootime and launch installers as an administrator on the users desktop? or is this too messy and creates too many issues? is there a way to do this with a console app or WPF?
Thanks in advance!

Indeed like what you found about windows services, I don't think this whole flow can work as a service. There seems to have some workarounds though, according to this thread: How can I run an EXE program from a Windows Service using C#?
If it's an app-store where users can choose what to install, maybe an application is all that's needed. Like you said:
I than use an application which talks to the windows service via a service hosted by the windows service. Long story short its told what app the user wants from the list and the list provides the file path for the application stored on a private repository.
Seems like an application can handle all the works here already.

windows service working on windows 7 but not on windows server 2003

Solved the problem see the bottom of my post.
So I have a simple windows service that watches a specific folder and upploads files that come into it to a server using a web service.
It's working fine on my machine using windows 7 but when I try to start it on a windows server 2003, I receive an error: Error 1053: the service did not respond to start or control request in a timely fashion. But I get this message after only a few seconds.
I have created the ServicesPipeTimeout and set it to 60000 milliseconds.
I have tried running it from command line using sc query command and found out that the WIN32_EXIT_CODE is 0, which I think means that the service doesn´t even try to start because it find an error before it starts.
In the event viewer I get errors 7000 and 7009.
I am the Administrator on the windows server.
The only thing I haven´t tried is a hotfix I found from microsoft but I don´t want to use it because as I understand it, it is for when the service actually times out.http://support.microsoft.com/kb/886695
I have tried everything I can think of, is there anything that I am missing?
Gísli
EDIT: Re-installed the .NET framework and now I get a new error, Saying that the service controller can not be found.
EDIT: I setup the service with a setup project, not using the installutil command. This is because I need to get user input during the installation and save that in the registry.
EDIT: I have installed the .NET 4.0 framework, it wasn´t possible to install the service with out doing that.
In addition to what I wrote above I have also tried:
Rebooting.
Re-installing.
I have tried to change the permissions on the files that the service needs to access.
Changing permissions in the registry editor.
Edited the code so that the onStart function only starts one thread.
I think it is some kind of permission problem but I don´t have much experience dealing with Windows server.
Solution:
It turned out to be two seperate problems. The .NET framwork had to be repaired and I had to remove the try/catch clause that I had when starting the service. For some reason (unknown to me) the try catch block did something that made it impossible to start the service in a windows server 2003 but it ran fine on windows 7.
It would be very interesting to know why this is.
Thanks for all the help.
Gísli

Have you installed the right version of .NET Framework on the Server 2003 PC? What comes as standard on Windows 7 will need to be installed manually on an older OS.
You say "I have tried everything I can think of". Please edit the question to show what you have already tried so we don't suggest something you have already done.
EDIT:
Try also the Fusion Log viewer. Set it to log failures then start your service. Hit refresh then see if any errors are logged. Double-click a line for more details.

I'd guess that you installed the .NET 3.5 service using .NET 2.0? InstallUtil will work since the CLR is the same, but the service won't start because of .NET 3.5 dependencies.
See Also:
How to install a Windows service developed in .NET 3.5?

In your OnStart code you could wrap everything in a try-catch block and write the exception message and stack trace to a file using something like:
File.WriteAllText(#"C:\Temp\MyServiceLog.txt", exp.Message + exp.StackTrace);
This will help you analyze the problem. Also, I'm using a very simple way of debugging my services: I'm wrapping them in a WinForms wrapper if the session is interactive. For that, I need the following:
A form that creates an instance of the service class
New methods DoStart and DoStop in my service class, which are public and call the protected OnStart and OnStop methods
New code in above form's OnLoad and OnClose handlers, so the DoStart and DoStop methods of the service instance are called accordingly
Then I add the following code to the Main method in Program.cs:
if (Environment.UserInteractive)
{
Application.Run(new FormServiceHoster());
}
else
{
// ... old code to create service instance.
}
This way you're making the "service" run as an application when you just hit F5 in Visual Studio or double click the EXE in the Explorer. When the service is actually run as a service, the Forms-code is ignored.
Usually you can debug services by attaching to the process, however, that doesn't work for debugging the start and stop code. This method helps a great deal debugging the service start and stop code.
You will need to add references to System.Windows.Forms and System.Drawing manually.

This is the point where I bet you wish you had used some logging package like log4net, which might help tell how far your program gets.
Is it possible that the code in the OnStart event is actually taking longer than you expect. If so, you could move that code to a thread, so that the OnStart event finishes (and so Windows reckons the service has started) while your thread continues working.
Are you running the service as admin? If so, that usually rules out permissions issues. (If it still goes wrong, it will rule out the KB 886695 issue as that seems to only apply to local system).
Since you are using .NET 4.0 are you sure that either, the full version is installed, rather than the Client Profile, or that your application works with the client profile?

Running a C# console application as a Windows service

I have a basic C# console application that I would like to run as a Windows Service.
I have created the Windows service using sc create. This worked fine, and I can see my service under services.msc. When I try and start this service I get the following error:
Could not start the PROJECT service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.`
I read that this might be due to the service code taking longer than 30000 ms to execute. Therefore I removed the bulk of the code so that hardly anything is being executed.. yet the same error persists.
I am using .NET 3.5 for this project.
What would cause this?

You cannot just take any console application and run as Windows service. First you need to implement your service class that would inherit from ServiceBase, then in entry point (Main) you need to run the service with ServiceBase.Run(new YourService()). In your service class you need to define what happens when service starts and ends.
Ideally you should add ServiceInstaller to your assembly too. This way you will be able to preset your service properties, and use installutil.exe to install the service.

Walkthrough: Creating a Windows Service Application in the Component Designer is a walkthrough of how to create a service.

Not any old application can be run as a service, especially under more recent versions of Windows. They are expected to support certain functionality, respond to certain requests, and (again, under recent versions of Windows) not interact with the user directly.
If you want a service, write an application specifically designed to be a service.

I do not know what "sc create" is. But I know, using Visual Studio 2010, one can build a Windows service project. By the way, I have created a project of this kind and it does work well all the way.

why is this so? – wulfgar.pro Jun 3 '11 at 1:13
#WulfgarPro - because windows service application has a little
different architecture. You need to define what to do when service starts and ends. – Alex Aza Jun 3 '11 at 1:15
(Unfortunately I can't write a comment yet.)
It is because SCM (Service Control Manager) controls the service trough ServiceBase Class. If one would only need to define what it does when it starts and stops there would be no need for inheritance and overriding. One could simply create those two methods. Unfortunately there is a bit more work involved because ServiceBase contains a bit more functionality.

I have had great success with TopShelf. This is a nuget package that allows your .NET console app to also have the necessary Windows Service hooks such that it can happily run as either a console app (useful for debugging), or be installed as a Windows Service.

Make program startup through windows service c#

I have a program starting up through the registry, but I want it to start up more efficiently. So I asked some questions and I have found out that a windows service is the way forward. I have looked at how to make a windows service but I have not found any answers for what I need.
I am trying to create a checkbox on my application so that when it is checked it adds a service to start up my application when the person logs in, and when it is not checked it deletes the service.
Any help would be appreciated,
Thanks.

This is not the correct way. Services cannot find out when a user logs in since Vista. In your prior thread you got the advice to create two programs, although that wasn't explicitly stated. A service that runs after the machine boots and a user interface that allows the user to communicate with the service after she logs in.
You'll need an inter-process communication mechanism to get them to talk to each other. Named pipes, a socket, Remoting or WCF will work.
Read the MSDN Library docs on the ServiceBase class, that's what you'll need to create a service.

Passing a Windows Service Parameters for it to act on

I want to turn a program I have into a service so I can use it without logging it. Basically what it does is it backs up specified folders to a specified location using SSH. However the problem I'm running into is I don't know how to tell it these items. I only know how to start, stop, and run a custom command with only an integer with a parameter.
How can I do this?
Windows Service, not a Web Service
edit: The folders it backs up will not remain consistent and will be updated at every runtime

You can instantiate your service and pass command line arguments using the ServiceController class.
using (ServiceController serviceController = new ServiceController(serviceName))
{
string[] args = new string[1];
args[0] = "arg1";
serviceController.Start(args);
}
"arg1" will then be available as regular command line arguments in main() when Windows starts up the service.

I see that you (or someone) voted Sebastian Sedlak's answer down, because he mentioned hosting a WCF Service in the Windows Service. Your reply was
It's in nice bold lettering in the question. Not a Web Service, therefor WCF is out of the question
I think you misunderstood what he meant. He wasn't talking about a Web Service. He was talking about hosting a WCF Service within your Windows Service.
It's far from the same thing. You can host a WCF Service within any Windows (Forms/Console/Service) application. The point of doing so, is that the application is then reachable for communciation via its internal WCF Service, in the same fashion as you can communicate with a Web Service (you can also host WCF Services in IIS, btw, which would then make them "Web Services", in the sense you seem to be referring to).
In a Windows Service, this means you can send any command to it and also get any information you want from it - while it's running.
In fact, I am working on a project right now, which is a Windows Service that I need to be able to contact and pass commands to - and get information from - at runtime. For example, I want to be able to tell it where to store certain things, what to log, to have it reset/restart - and poll it for status messages. I do this by hosting a WCF Service inside the Windows Service. That WCF Service exposes a set of methods, that in my case includes receiving commands and returning status information. So when the Windows Service is running, I can contact it (even remotely), via its built-in WCF Service and tell it what to do.
This an extremely easy thing to implement, and in the case of Windows Services, can provide you with a much richer interface to the Service than through the basic standard commands.
However, you specified that you wanted your Windows Service to receive its folder settoings each time it starts up, which makes such a passive setup less than ideal (as it would be unable to do anything until you passed it the right folders).
One way to deal with this (using a hosted WCF Service), would be to have the Windows Service running all the time (i.e. automatic startup). Its default state would be idle. Then you could issue it a "start processing"-command, feeding it the correct folders to work on (through a call to the corresponding WCF Service method). Similarly, the WCF Service would expose methods giving you the status of the application (current folder, progress, busy/idle etc). Once the processing is done, it would go back into the idle state, waiting for the next set of folders to be supplied to it.
Doing it this way would make it very easy to control remotely - you could even make an online administration panel for it, accessible from anywhere.

The issue, is that, while passing in parameters is not difficult, when the machine restarts and windows tries to restart the service, those parameters are not there. they only exist when someone starts the service from the command line.
for example. I have a windows service which hosts a WCF service. I want the users to be able to specify a non-default port number for the WCF service to listen on. They do this by starting the windows service like so... MyService -port:xxxxx
Which works fine, until the server is rebooted, then windows restarts MyService (but without parameters) and the wcf service defaults to original port #

Any service is capable of receiving command line arguments at start-up.

Would it be possible to use a configuration file to specify these items?

Store the service's startup parameters in the registry: and then, when the registry starts, it should read its startup parameters from the registry.

Windows services have executables like any other. I believe you can write it to accept command-line parameters and specify those parameters in the Windows Service configuration. You can also have it read a config file. If you're using .NET, there are config file classes in the framework.

Why not just Host a WCF Service in the Windows Service to obatain such "admin" functions?
(Remoting is also possible)

RE: config file.
Of course a config file can be used.
And the file can be changed while the service is running.
This would be a nice solution if the config file changes in fact.
All my services use an XML config file, wrapped in a class for easy reuse.
The wrapper has an option to monitor the XML file using fileMonitor for changes, optionally refreshing the content of the config file automatically, and finally raises an event to the service class.
The service then has the option of "resetting" itself as needed to incorporate the new values in the XML configuration file.
Placing configuration into the registry has a few issues:
Security (ie: installer being granted access), depending on what tree is used
The service will not be aware of changes
Portability - although minor as the install should setup registry settings
Where an XML file is easy to copy, edit, share, view and understand.
Throw in some good COMMENT blocks and a detailed XSD file, and it becomes a source of good documentation too.
Look into XPath for easy navigation and extraction of values within the XML file.
$0.02
... david ...

Concerning the app.config file - I'm rather sure that your service will read and use those files as I write all my windows-services this way ;)
So just put everything you need in the app.config under "application" (not user) and put allway edit the "yourname.exe.config" in the folder where you "InstallUtil" the service from.