Can a service written in .NET self-terminate?

Question

I have a service application written in C# and under certain circumstances, I would like it to terminate itself. This would happen after the service has been running for a while, so this would not be happening in the OnStart() event.

Everything that I have read so far suggests that the only safe way to terminate a service is through the Service Control Manager. My service runs as Local Service and does not have the rights to start or stop services, so I can't access the SCM from the service itself. Is there another way to self-terminate while still playing by the rules of the SCM?

Answer 1

Try ServiceBase.Stop().

Answer 2

If you want to terminate the service instead of stopping it (perhaps because the service has caught an otherwise unhandled exception) you can use Environment.Exit(1) (use another exit code if you want).

Windows will discover that the service has terminated unexpectedly. If the service has been configured to recover the recovery procedure will be used which includes options for restarting the service, running a program or restarting the computer.