Installing a Service Programmatically
Author Date Of Submission User Level
Sachin Nigam 09/04/2003 Intermediate
With the arrival of .Net, creation of a windows service has become a piece of cake by just selecting Windows Service as project type in the New Project Dialog Box. For installing a service, .Net provides a utility called installutil.exe which installs the service and registers it with Service Control Manager(SCM) but at times there is a need to install the service programmatically for example as a part of your custom installer program where you don't want your user to manually install the service using installutil.
The following piece of code shows how to install/uninstall a given service and register it with SCM calling appropriate APIs using P/Invoke in C#
SERVICEINSTALLER.CS
using System;using System.Runtime.InteropServices; namespace SvcInstaller
{
/// <summary>
/// Summary description for ServiceInstaller.
/// </summary> class ServiceInstaller { #region Private Variables private string _servicePath; private string _serviceName; private string _serviceDisplayName; #endregion Private Variables #region DLLImport [DllImport("advapi32.dll")] public static extern IntPtr OpenSCManager(string lpMachineName,string lpSCDB, int scParameter); [DllImport("Advapi32.dll")] public static extern IntPtr CreateService(IntPtr SC_HANDLE,string lpSvcName,string lpDisplayName, int dwDesiredAccess,int dwServiceType,int dwStartType,int dwErrorControl,string lpPathName, string lpLoadOrderGroup,int lpdwTagId,string lpDependencies,string lpServiceStartName,string lpPassword); [DllImport("advapi32.dll")] public static extern void CloseServiceHandle(IntPtr SCHANDLE); [DllImport("advapi32.dll")] public static extern int StartService(IntPtr SVHANDLE,int dwNumServiceArgs,string lpServiceArgVectors); [DllImport("advapi32.dll",SetLastError=true)] public static extern IntPtr OpenService(IntPtr SCHANDLE,string lpSvcName,int dwNumServiceArgs); [DllImport("advapi32.dll")] public static extern int DeleteService(IntPtr SVHANDLE); [DllImport("kernel32.dll")] public static extern int GetLastError(); #endregion DLLImport /// <summary> /// The main entry point for the application. /// </summary> #region Main method + testing code [STAThread] static void Main(string[] args) { // TODO: Add code to start application here #region Testing // Testing -------------- string svcPath; string svcName; string svcDispName; //path to the service that you want to install svcPath = @"C:\build\service\Debug\Service.exe"; svcDispName="Service Display Name"; svcName= "Service Name"; ServiceInstaller c = new ServiceInstaller(); c.InstallService(svcPath, svcName, svcDispName); Console.Read(); Testing -------------- #endregion Testing } #endregion Main method + testing code - Commented /// <summary> /// This method installs and runs the service in the service conrol manager. /// </summary> /// <param name="svcPath">The complete path of the service.</param> /// <param name="svcName">Name of the service.</param> /// <param name="svcDispName">Display name of the service.</param> /// <returns>True if the process went thro successfully. False if there was any error.</returns> public bool InstallService(string svcPath, string svcName, string svcDispName) { #region Constants declaration. int SC_MANAGER_CREATE_SERVICE = 0x0002; int SERVICE_WIN32_OWN_PROCESS = 0x00000010; //int SERVICE_DEMAND_START = 0x00000003; int SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL = 0x00000001; int STANDARD_RIGHTS_REQUIRED = 0xF0000; int SERVICE_QUERY_CONFIG = 0x0001; int SERVICE_CHANGE_CONFIG = 0x0002; int SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS = 0x0004; int SERVICE_ENUMERATE_DEPENDENTS = 0x0008; int SERVICE_START =0x0010; int SERVICE_STOP =0x0020; int SERVICE_PAUSE_CONTINUE =0x0040; int SERVICE_INTERROGATE =0x0080; int SERVICE_USER_DEFINED_CONTROL =0x0100; int SERVICE_ALL_ACCESS = (STANDARD_RIGHTS_REQUIRED | SERVICE_QUERY_CONFIG | SERVICE_CHANGE_CONFIG | SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS | SERVICE_ENUMERATE_DEPENDENTS | SERVICE_START | SERVICE_STOP | SERVICE_PAUSE_CONTINUE | SERVICE_INTERROGATE | SERVICE_USER_DEFINED_CONTROL); int SERVICE_AUTO_START = 0x00000002; #endregion Constants declaration. try { IntPtr sc_handle = OpenSCManager(null,null,SC_MANAGER_CREATE_SERVICE); if (sc_handle.ToInt32() != 0) { IntPtr sv_handle = CreateService(sc_handle,svcName,svcDispName,SERVICE_ALL_ACCESS,SERVICE_WIN32_OWN_PROCESS, SERVICE_AUTO_START,SERVICE_ERROR_NORMAL,svcPath,null,0,null,null,null); if(sv_handle.ToInt32() ==0) { CloseServiceHandle(sc_handle); return false; } else { //now trying to start the service int i = StartService(sv_handle,0,null); // If the value i is zero, then there was an error starting the service. // note: error may arise if the service is already running or some other problem. if(i==0) { //Console.WriteLine("Couldnt start service"); return false; } //Console.WriteLine("Success"); CloseServiceHandle(sc_handle); return true; } } else //Console.WriteLine("SCM not opened successfully"); return false; } catch(Exception e) { throw e; } } /// <summary> /// This method uninstalls the service from the service conrol manager. /// </summary> /// <param name="svcName">Name of the service to uninstall.</param> public bool UnInstallService(string svcName) { int GENERIC_WRITE = 0x40000000; IntPtr sc_hndl = OpenSCManager(null,null,GENERIC_WRITE); if(sc_hndl.ToInt32() !=0) { int DELETE = 0x10000; IntPtr svc_hndl = OpenService(sc_hndl,svcName,DELETE); //Console.WriteLine(svc_hndl.ToInt32()); if(svc_hndl.ToInt32() !=0) { int i = DeleteService(svc_hndl); if (i != 0) { CloseServiceHandle(sc_hndl); return true; } else { CloseServiceHandle(sc_hndl); return false; } } else return false; } else return false; } }
}
The above code shows that installing a service programmatically is as simple if not simpler than using installutil and gives you far more flexibility.
