Question

I have created a windows service which is set to start automatically. This service connects to the database service on startup. The issue is the database service seems to start after my service. Is there is a programmatic way to define this dependency so that my service starts after the database service has started.

I found this article http://www.boyce.us/windows/servertipcontent.asp?ID=7 which talks about adding a registry entry to do that. I would like to know if there is a C# way to do this?

Update:

Adding to the above question. Here is another scenario. The services are being installed using installshied which does not need a projectinsaller. It seems installshield looks for classes deriving from ServiceBase class and installs each service. How to add the dependency in such a scenario?

Answer 1

You’re looking for the ServiceInstaller.ServicesDependedOn Property for your project’s ServiceInstaller component.

From the article’s Remarks section (and I bolded the part you’re interested in):

A service can require other services
to be running before it can start. The
information from this property is
written to a key in the registry. When
the user (or the system, in the case
of automatic startup) tries to run the
service, the Service Control Manager
(SCM) verifies that each of the
services in the array has already been
started.

If any service in the array is not
running then, the SCM tries to start
them. This includes services with
Manual StartType.

If any service upon which this service
depends fails to start, this service
will not start. An exception is not
thrown if the system is not started
because there is no exception handling
at the system level to detect this.
Decide how to handle service start
failures and implement this in your
code. Typically, a dialog appears to
the user at startup if a service fails
to start.

If the service does not start, an
entry is written to the Application
event log.

The services upon which this service
depends do not need to be in the same
executable.