Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I'm fairly new to writing services. I've written a service that runs a timer and the timer code runs some checks to ensure our systems are up and running. It's written in VB.Net, framework 1.1. I then install the service using "sc create". The service works beautifully on the XP Pro machine that I'm developing on. However, when I install the service on a Windows 2003 server 64 bit, the service fails with error 1053 immediately. I put some debugging in to write to a text file as the first line of code in the OnStart function but even that doesn't run, so there must be a problem in the program starting up. Finally in desperation I created a brand new Windows Service in a new VB project in Visual Studio 2003 and compiled an empty service that merely declares and sets the value of a string variable in the OnStart function as follows:
Dim strTmp As String
strTmp = "hello"
Even that failed on the W2K3 server, but works fine on the XP dev machine. The server has .Net Framework 1.1 installed and working, we use it in our CMS (written in ASP.Net 1.1). The service runs as the local system account. I tried enabling interaction with the desktop but that didn't help. I ran Process Monitor and there are no access denied events. I emptied the Application Event Log, still doesn't work. No other events to help me out in the logs. Definitely using the Release build of the application. Permissions on the exe file are full control for System and for Admins. Any ideas anyone? It must be something simple, but I'm damned if I can figure it out! Thanks in advance.
@DavidHi, many thanks for the suggestions. I don´t think the first point is my problem, partly because the MS article is about stopping or pausing the service, mine fails on starting; but also because the service does not timeout, there is no 30 second wait, it fails immediately. Secondly, when you say add an exception handler to the service startup, do you mean the OnStart sub? I tried adding a debug file write in there, but I'll try adding an event log instead. Regarding the systems checks, it can't be that because the brand new empty test service I created shows the same behaviour and that does not do anything at all. You last point could be the key. My dev environment IS 32bit. I'll do some research on the corflags thing, or perhaps I can build a 64bit dev environment. Many thanks again, you've given me some new things to think about at least!
Ok, have found a workaround. I was putting my exe file in System32. When I put it in a different folder, created by myself, the service ran, albeit briefly. I then had to move the ini file and the log files that it reads/writes to that folder too, rather than System32, and all seems to work nicely. God knows why it doesn't like running from System32 but at least it works now! Thanks for the help guys.
