Question

This is my first window service that I am writing, I need some help in writing it, I am trying to use single thread so that one thread can start the service
and the other thread can take care of calling the functions that does the database work. I am also using a timer so that this service only runs once a day below is my code

The reason i am posting this question is whenever I tried to install this service, it is throwing an error saying “fatal error occure”, it doen’t give me any details.

public partial class Service1 : ServiceBase
    {
        private DateTime _lastRun = DateTime.Now;
        Thread workerThread;

    public Service1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
        {

            ThreadStart st = new ThreadStart(WorkerFunction);
            workerThread = new Thread(st);
            serviceStarted = true;
            workerThread.Start();
        }
     protected override void OnStop()
        {
            // flag to tell the worker process to stop
            serviceStarted = false;

            // give it a little time to finish any pending work
            workerThread.Join(new TimeSpan(0, 2, 0));
            timer1.Enabled = false;
        }

     private void WorkerFunction()
        {
                while (serviceStarted)
                {

                  EventLog.WriteEntry("Service working",
                     System.Diagnostics.EventLogEntryType.Information);

                  // yield
                  if (serviceStarted)
                  {
                     Thread.Sleep(new TimeSpan(0, 20000, 0));
                  }
                  timer1.Enabled = true;
                  timer1.Start();
                }

               // time to end the thread
               Thread.CurrentThread.Abort();
        }


         private void timer1_Elapsed(object sender, System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs e)
            {
                    if (_lastRun.Date < DateTime.Now.Date)
                    {
                        timer1.Stop();
                // does the actual work that deals with the database
                }

            timer1.Start();
            }

Answer 1

There’s a few things to check:

1. Be sure that you have configured the EventLog source correctly (MSDN). My answer to Windows service Started and stopped automatically, exception handling issue could be useful here also.
2. It looks like you are using a Windows Forms Timer – these require a UI message pump, which you won’t have in a service (MSDN). You should instead investigate using the Timer class in the System.Threading namespace (MSDN).

In particular, you may find the using a System.Threading.Timer will simplify your code a great deal as this object will manage a bit more of the plumbing for you.

I would also advise against calling Thread.Abort(): it can be harmful and unpredictable, and in your case it doesn’t appear that you need to use it at all. See To CurrentThread.Abort or not to CurrentThread.Abort and
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5b50fdsz.aspx.