Question

I’m installing a Windows Service using the ServiceProcessInstaller and ServiceInstaller classes.

I’ve used the ServiceProcessInstaller to set the start type, name, etc. But how do I set the recovery action to Restart?

I know I can do it manually after the service is installed by going to the Services management console and changing the settings on the recovery tab of the service’s properties, but is there a way to do it during the install?

Answer 1

You can set the recovery options using sc. The following will set the service to restart after a failure:

sc failure [servicename] reset= 0 actions= restart/60000

This can easily be called from C#:

static void SetRecoveryOptions(string serviceName)
{
    int exitCode;
    using (var process = new Process())
    {
        var startInfo = process.StartInfo;
        startInfo.FileName = "sc";
        startInfo.WindowStyle = ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;

        // tell Windows that the service should restart if it fails
        startInfo.Arguments = string.Format("failure \"{0}\" reset= 0 actions= restart/60000", serviceName);

        process.Start();
        process.WaitForExit();

        exitCode = process.ExitCode;
    }

    if (exitCode != 0)
        throw new InvalidOperationException();
}