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Cannot stop the service using ServiceController in .NET 3.5

I'm working in .NET 3.5 and I have the problem with stopping some service using ServiceController. I searched whole internet and I found no solution to my problem ;)
Here's how I do that:
using (ServiceController service = new ServiceController("Service"))
{
try
{
TimeSpan timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutSeconds);
service.Stop();
service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, timeout);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
}
}
I'm waiting until my service stops. Then I want to replace it's libraries (update it). And the exception is thrown:
UnauthorizedAccessException
Exception Details: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'blablabla' is denied.
I'm sure that I have access to this path, because I run my application as an Administrator.
What is interesting when this piece of code executes, this Service disappear from the List of current services (in Task Manager). So it actually stops it, but some thread has to still use it, so I can not move any Service's files. Even when I try to move files by myself (I go to the Service directory and try to move its files using mouse) I can not do it. But when I stop the Service manually (Task Manager and 'End Task') I can do whatever I want with its files. So what's the difference between stopping it from C# code (using ServiceController) and stopping it using Task Manager?
I don't know if it's important but I run this application (and this Service) on Windows Server 2008 in Virtual Box. (I needed to run it on some other machine then my computer).
Any ideas how can I solve this problem? ;)
Thanks for any help.
Best wishes,
Pete.

Ok, I solved my problem.
First I used an Administrator Command-Prompt Command of Net Stop to stop the Service and it worked, but I started to wonder why. The answer is it took a lot of time!
ServiceController actually stopped it, but some processes was still using it.
service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, timeout);
Also workerd fine, because it imidaitely changed the status of the service (it's just one change in Windows Services list), but closing politely all threads using certain Service takes some time :)
So all You need to do is just wait, and then check again if it's still running. If it is, then kill it with Process class.

Windows service not running. Error 1053

I m trying to run my windows service but it is giving error 1053: "timed out"
The error 1053 should pop up in case the start up method fails to respond in 30 seconds but in this case the OnStart method is not even reached. I tried debugging it but it is not helping as i don't even reach the actual code and the error message pops up before that. Can any one help in this case?

I had a similar issue when I was trying to install a service at remote desktop and erring
Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion
I was able to fix this issue by installing the targeted dotnet framework
(sometime remote servers on lower framework and we build the service using latest framework).
So my finding is that in these cases you need to check few things:
install proper dependencies
all dlls are with targeted framework
Main static method present in servivce.cs

I'm new to Windows Services development and Faced Same Issue
I tried everything that was given in this link this link and
in this link but still I was not able to fix issue!
Then I tried some other small things on my own and I found 2 things in my solution
Startup Object Not Set in solution properties
for this, right click -> windowsServiceProject -> click properties -> in there will be left menu in it click on ->Application ->Check "Startup Object" -> If its "empty" ? then click and select project/Service Name.Program (in my case the main method is in program.cs so..)
and if it's selected and is ok then... there can be an error in your code see point number 2
Error In Our Service Code
For this try to simply run the project with Pressing "Start".
If there are any exception or error Like: null pointer or, there were some wrong or missing path or anything that generates exception on running because of developer's mistake then it will show a thrown error and you will able to solve it EG:enter image description here
or if the code is ok then it will show like this:
a dialog box "Windows Service can not be debugged you have to install it
first then and then it will be able to run" (if this dialog shows it's ok normal behaviour if showing any exception then fix that thing and rebuild you will be able to start the service)

My C# application is returning 0xE0434352 to Windows Task Scheduler but it is not crashing

I have written a few C# apps that I have running via windows task scheduler. They are running successfully (as I can see from the log files that they are writing ) but windows task scheduler shows them returning a last run result of 0xE0434352. Is there something I need to do in my C# application so that it returns a success code to the windows task scheduler?

Another option is to simply use the Application log accessible via the Windows Event Viewer. The .Net error will be recorded to the Application log.
You can see these events here:
Event Viewer (Local) > Windows Logs > Application

When setup a job in new windows you have two fields "program/script" and "Start in(Optional)". Put program name in first and program location in second.
If you will not do that and your program start not in directory with exe, it will not find files that are located in it.

Hans Passant was correct, I added a handler for AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException as described here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.appdomain.unhandledexception(v=vs.71).aspx I was able to find the exception that was occurring and corrected it.

I was referencing a mapped drive and I found that the mapped drives are not always available to the user account that is running the scheduled task so I used \\IPADDRESS instead of MAPDRIVELETTER: and I am up and running.

In case it helps others, I got this error when the service the task was running at didn't have write permission to the executable location. It was attempting to write a log file there.

I had this issue and it was due to the .Net framework version. I had upgraded the build to framework 4.0 but this seemed to affect some comms dlls the application was using. I rolled back to framework 3.5 and it worked fine.

I got the same error but I have fixed it by changing the file reading path from "ConfigFile.xml" to AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory.ToString() + "ConfigFile.xml"
In my case, this error due to file path error because task manager starts program from "System32" as initial path but the folder we thought.

I was getting the same message message within dotNet Core 2.2 using MVC 5, however nothing was being logged to the Windows Event Viewer.
I found that I had changed the Project sdk from Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web to Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor (seen within the projects.csproj file). I changed this back and it worked fine :)

In my case it was because I had message boxes. Once I commented that code out, it started working. I remembered that could be a problem when I looked at the event log as suggested in this thread. Thank you everyone!

I encountered this problem when working with COM objects. Under certain circumstances (my fault), I destroyed an external .EXE process, in a parallel thread, a variable tried to access the com interface app.method and a COM-level crash occurred. Task Scheduler noticed this and shut down the app. But if you run the app in the console and don't handle the exception, the app will continue to work ...
Please note that if you use unmanaged code or external objects (AD, Socket, COM ...), you need to monitor them!

Also message box in PowerShell. I converted PowerShell script to exe. When running as admin it's worked but in task schedule I received this error also.
There was an line in PowerShell script with write-output. After commented this line and compile new exe Task Schedule was completed successfully.

It is permission issue in my case the task scheduler has a user which doesn't have permission on the server in which the database is present.

Windows Service Not Starting After Installing

Well, I have created a new windows service and the install from Visual Studio.
When I am done installing, how can I start the service ?
I need something that will allow me to start the process, or an exe.. something?
The Installer is : Visual Studio Installer - Setup Project.
Any help?
My question in order:
Why the service don't start?
How can i control what happen after intall ? Where is the code for it?
Thanks!

even you Set the startup type to Automatic it will not start your service automatically until the machine restart. what you can do is create event handler for AfterInstall event of your service installer class and start the service using ServiceController Start method as below
public serviceInstaller()
{
this.AfterInstall += new InstallEventHandler(serviceInstaller_AfterInstall);
}
void serviceInstaller_AfterInstall(object sender, InstallEventArgs e)
{
ServiceController sc = new ServiceController(serviceInstaller.ServiceName);
sc.Start();
}
you can create event using the visual studio event window as well.

to start your service you can either execute the command:
net start YourServiceName
or go to Control Panel -> Admin tools -> Services and select your service and click start.
full path above depends also on your actual windows version.
even if you did not use any logging, in general service failures are recorded in the Windows Event Log so open Event Viewer and see latest events.

Set the startup type to Automatic in the ServiceInstaller class properties (you can do it in the Designer file).

A windows service needs to be installed ( it should tell you what to do if you try debugging it ), then started in the server manager. Then you can attach to it.
They are a bit of a pain to debug, TBH.

What does the service do? is it opening SQL connections?
looking for a file?
check in your event viewer where the service is installed for errors after you try to start it, it will give us a better understanding.

It is impossible to understand your question unless you take interest in making it understandable.
However from my assumption,
Goto Visual studio Tools => Visual Studio command prompt
use command net start <>
If fails starting the servicce, Check event log (eventvwr.msc in run dialog) to see if there any relevant errors logged.

Your Windows service working in some systems.
If you face some system getting error Windows Service not starting after installing if manually/automatically.
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.
Event Viewer - eventvwr.msc
Normally you can get to this by going to the computer/server manager, then clicking Event Viewer -> Windows Logs -> Application. You can see what threw the exception here, which may help, but you don't get the stack trace.
Event Viewer Log Image
Add try/catch block in your service start method.
Let you check whether you are using any hot code(For Ex: "D:\"). That drive is not available in installed system.
This will helps a lot!

How do you debug a Windows Service?

I read the MSDN article on the topic. To quote:
Because a service must be run from
within the context of the Services
Control Manager rather than from
within Visual Studio, debugging a
service is not as straightforward as
debugging other Visual Studio
application types. To debug a service,
you must start the service and then
attach a debugger to the process in
which it is running. You can then
debug your application using all of
the standard debugging functionality
of Visual Studio.
Now my problem is that my service fails to start in the first place. First it crashes, and says:
An unhandled exception
(System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException)
occurred in MyServiceName.exe[3596])
and suggests me to debug it (the debugger instance instantly crashes when I choose one). Then it says
Could not start the MyServiceName
service on Local Computer. Error
1053: The service did not respond to
the start or control request in a
timely fashion
So, how can I investigate/debug the reason that my service won't start? The thing is I created a console application that does EXACTLY what the service does and it works fine. (I mean I just copied the OnStart() method's and the main loop's contents to main).
Any help would be appreciated.
The Service is written in C# with heavy use of interop. I am using VS2008

You could use a parameter to let your application decide whether to start as service or regular app (i.e. in this case show a Form or start the service):
static void Main(string[] args)
{
if ((1 == args.Length) && ("-runAsApp" == args[0]))
{
Application.Run(new application_form());
}
else
{
System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun;
ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] { new MyService() };
System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
}
}
Now if you pass the parameter "-runAsApp" you can debug the application normally - the SCM won't pass this parameter, so you can also use it as service w/o any code change (provided you derive from ServiceBase)
Edit:
The other difference with windows services is identity (this might be especially important with InterOp) - you want to make sure you are testing under the same identity in "app" mode as well as service mode.
To do so you can use impersonation (I can post a C# wrapper if it helps, but this can be easily googled) in app mode to use the same identity your windows service will be running under i.e. usually LocalService or NetworkService.
If another identity is required you can add settings to the app.config that allow you to decide whether to use credentials, and if so which user to impersonate - these settings would be active when running as app, but turned off for the windows service (since the service is already running under the desired identity):
<appSettings>
<add key="useCredentials" value="false"/>
<add key="user" value="Foo"/>
<add key="password" value="Bar"/>
</appSettings>

I usually just manually set a breakpoint, then point it to the currently open project in c#. The code to set a breakpoint is:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
That should get you started, then you can just step through your code and see what's really happening.

I stole this from C. Lawrence Wenham, so I can't really take credit, but you can programmatically attach a debugger to a service, WITHOUT breaking execution at that point, with the following code:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
Put this in your service's OnStart() method, as the first line, and it will prompt you to choose an instance of VS to attach its debugger. From there, the system will stop at breakpoints you set, and on exceptions thrown out. I would put an #if DEBUG clause around the code so a Release build won't include it; or you can just strip it out after you find the problem.

You can use WinDbg/NTSD (another debugger from the "Debugging tools for windows" package) to start a debugger together with your service.
To do this open "gflags" (also available in the above mentioned package) to the "Image file" tab and set the path to debugger executable for your image file (service);
If your service is marked as interactive (only possible if it runs under the SYSTEM account) you can directly start WinDbg, just set the debugger to something like "PATH_TO_WINDBG\windbg.exe -g -G" (the -g / -G are needed so that the debugger doesn't break execution on application start or end - the default behaviour). Now when starting your service the windbg window should pop-up and will catch any unhandled exception.
If your service is not interactive you can start the NTSD debugger (a command line debugger) in remote mode and connect to it from WinDbg (that can even be running in another PC). To do this set the debugger in gflags to something like "PATH_TO_NTSD\ntsd -remote tcp:port=6666,server=localhost". Then connect to the remote debugger by starting windbg with something like "windbg -remote tcp:port=6666,server=localhost" and you should have complete control over the other debugging session.
As for finding the source of the exception itself a windbg tutorial is over the topic here but as a start try to execute the "!analyze -v" command after the exception was caught - with some luck this is all information you'll need..
Note: maybe this is overkill for your case but with this approach you can even debug services during system start-up (I had once a timing problem with a service had an issue only when starting the first time with the system)

One thing I do (which may be kind of a hack) is put a Thread.Sleep(10000) right at the beginning of my OnStart() method. This gives me a 10-second window to attach my debugger to the service before it does anything else.
Of course I remove the Thread.Sleep() statement when I'm done debugging.
One other thing you may do is the following:
public override void OnStart()
{
try
{
// all your OnStart() logic here
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
// Log ex.Message
if (!EventLog.SourceExists("MyApplication"))
EventLog.CreateEventSource("MyApplication", "Application");
EventLog.WriteEntry("MyApplication", "Failed to start: " + ex.Message);
throw;
}
}
When you log ex.Message, you may get a more detailed error message. Furthermore, you could just log ex.ToString() to get the whole stack trace, and if your .pdb files are in the same directory as your executable, it will even tell you what line the Exception occurred on.

Add lots of verbose logging in your OnStart. It's painful and old school, but it works.

Seems like the problem is with the user context. Let me confirm whether my assumptions are right.
When you say that the code works perfectly from console application, I assume you are executing the Console application under the same user which you had logged in.
When you say that the same code crashes while called from the windows service, I assume the service is running in "Local System" account in your development machine.
If both my assumptions are right, please try out the following steps.
In the services listing right-click your service, select properties and then "Log On" tab.
Select the option "This account" and provide the existing username and password.
Now try starting the service. It should now start without any errors.
Following could be the root cause of your error
If you are using SQL Server make sure you are not using SSPI authentication.
If you are trying to read any shared folder\resource which you don't have permission when using "local system" account.
If any of the required dependencies required by the application is in a different folder which the "Local System" user doesn't have permission to access.
If you are using VBA automation which wont work in "Local System" account.
Try disabling your firewall or antivirus.

You could add some logging around the interop calls to find out which one fails.
Also services by default aren't associated with a desktop; if you open the services.msc control panel applet, get the properties of your service, go to the "Log On" tab, you could check "Allow service to interact with desktop". This could fix the problem for you in some cases.

I would assume the reason could be causing because of heavy use of interops. So you need to tackle this problem differently. I would suggest create a windows or console app with same logic of you service and make sure that it works first without any issues, and then you may want to go with creation of the Win service.

Debugging services is a pain, particularly since startup seems to be when many of the problems manifest (at least for us).
What we typically do is extract as much of the logic as possible to a single class that has start and stop methods. Those class methods are all that the service calls directly. We then create a WinForm application that has two buttons: one to invoke start, another to invoke stop. We can then run this WinForm applicaiton directly from the debugger and see what is happening.
Not the most elegant solution, but it works for us.

Check out this question, which discusses how to catch unhandled exceptions in a window service.

In order to attach a debugger to the Windows Service, it needs to be started first. The reason why the service failed to start can be checked in Windows Event Log.
After that the process of attaching a debugger is pretty straight forward from Visual Studio Debug->Attach To Process.

What I've done is implemented by OnStart() to look something like this:
_myBusinessObject = new MyBusinessObject();
After the Business Object has been constructed, timers and IPC handlers do all the real (Service) work.
Doing it like this allows you to create a Forms/WPF application that call the same code above in the Form_Loaded handler. This way, debugging the Forms application is the exact same as debugging the Service.
The only issue is that if you are using app.config values, there will be a second app.config file that needs to be kept up-to-date.

Use following Code in Service OnStart Method:
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
Choose Visual Studio option from Pop Up message

read the 2 articles mentioned here:
http://geekswithblogs.net/BlackRabbitCoder/archive/2011/03/01/c-toolbox-debug-able-self-installable-windows-service-template-redux.aspx

Step 1 - Add #if region to your Program.cs
static class Program
{
/// <summary>
/// The main entry point for the application.
/// </summary>
static void Main()
{
ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun;
ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[]
{
new StockInfoService()
};
ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
#if (!DEBUG)
ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] { new SqlBackupService() };
ServiceBase.Run(ServicesToRun);
#else
StockInfoService service = new StockInfoService();
service.OnStart();
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(System.Threading.Timeout.Infinite);
#endif
}
Step 2 - In Service.cs change your OnStart(string[] args) method without parameter one. (I commended mine.)
public void OnStart()
//protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
**Do your thing.
}
Step 3 - Simply hit Start (F5) and debug your code.