Error 1053: the service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

Question

I have recently inherited a couple of applications that run as windows services, and I am having problems providing a gui (accessible from a context menu in system tray) with both of them.

The reason why we need a gui for a windows service is in order to be able to re-configure the behaviour of the windows service(s) without resorting to stopping/re-starting.

My code works fine in debug mode, and I get the context menu come up, and everything behaves correctly etc.

When I install the service via "installutil" using a named account (i.e., not Local System Account), the service runs fine, but doesn't display the icon in the system tray (I know this is normal behavior because I don't have the "interact with desktop" option).

Here is the problem though - when I choose the "LocalSystemAccount" option, and check the "interact with desktop" option, the service takes AGES to start up for no obvious reason, and I just keep getting

Could not start the ... service on Local Computer.

Error 1053: the service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

Incidentally, I increased the windows service timeout from the default 30 seconds to 2 minutes via a registry hack (see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344, search for TimeoutPeriod in section 3), however the service start up still times out.

My first question is - why might the "Local System Account" login takes SOOOOO MUCH LONGER than when the service logs in with the non-LocalSystemAccount, causing the windows service time-out? what's could the difference be between these two to cause such different behavior at start up?

Secondly - taking a step back, all I'm trying to achieve, is simply a windows service that provides a gui for configuration - I'd be quite happy to run using the non-Local System Account (with named user/pwd), if I could get the service to interact with the desktop (that is, have a context menu available from the system tray). Is this possible, and if so how?

Any pointers to the above questions would be appreciated!

Answer 1

After fighting this message for days, a friend told me that you MUST use the Release build. When I InstallUtil the Debug build, it gives this message. The Release build Starts fine.