Question

I have a C# Windows Service. The OnStart() method contains 3 lines that all they do is start a thread. The class itself has no static objects that would cause a delay. It is as simple as a service can be. My code is signed by a self made key.

Edit: I just figured out that assembly isn’t signed, the rest are. It uses a few assemblies which are signed but the service itself isn’t.

This code is running inside a virtual machine, whenever the host is running slow and this VM is booting up, the service will fail to start with this error:

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the ServiceName service to connect.

Setting the service to delay start fixes it but it’s a long delay and it’s very annoying. Has anyone else had this problem with .NET services (2.0)?

The OnStart method:

protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
    Thread startThread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(StartThread));
    startThread.IsBackground = true;
    startThread.Start();
}

The StartThread method, in which all I do is call another class so that the OnStart won’t have to wait for static variable initialization or for the constructor method to end.

private void StartThread()
{
    Worker mainThread = new Worker(this);
    mainThread.RunWorker();
}

Thank you.

Answer 1

I think this is most likely due to the strong name signing that you have on your executable. In general, it’s not good practice to do that on executables (see here). I have also experienced the same problem in one of my projects, where an executable took an incredible amount of time to start, and turned out it was due to strong name signing the executable (.NET 2.0 as well).