Windows service will not start (Error 1053)

Question

I have a Windows Service that I am trying to debug. Now it fails to start even though the current code used to work. The error is:

Windows could not start the MyService service on Local Computer

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

To isolate the error, I tried to comment out everything. The main method looks like this:

TextWriter tt = new StreamWriter(@"C:\startup.text", true);
tt.WriteLine("Starting up the service");
tt.Close();

ServiceBase[] ServicesToRun;
ServicesToRun = new ServiceBase[] 
   { 
       new MyService()
   };

TextWriter tt2 = new StreamWriter(@"C:\startup.text", true);
tt2.WriteLine("Run...");
tt2.Close();

It prints out both "Starting up the service" and "Run..." to the log file. I also stripped the inside of MyService so it's empty. There is a try/catch around any code, which now is reduced to some log lines like above. I never enters the catch statement, which would have logged it.

Everything in OnStart has been commented out:

protected override void OnStart(string[] args)
{
}

So I'm basically out of ideas. I thought the error was because the Start method never finishes (or doesn't within 30 seconds). Is there some other method that is called? Any ideas are appreciated.

Extra info: The constructor in MyService is empty. If I insert some Thread.Sleep(5000) lines, then it takes longer beofre the error message about Error 1053 pops up. The Main method seems to have to exit (without error).

Answer 1

You are missing ServiceBase.Run call:

ServiceBase[] servicesToRun = new ServiceBase[]
                                { 
                                    new MyService() 
                                };
ServiceBase.Run(servicesToRun);

It might also be a good idea to subscribe to unhandled exceptions notification:

static void Main() {
    ...
    AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException 
                                      += CurrentDomain_UnhandledException;
    ...
}

private static void CurrentDomain_UnhandledException(
                                                 Object sender, 
                                                 UnhandledExceptionEventArgs e) {

    if (e != null && e.ExceptionObject != null) {
        // log exception:
    }
}

And add following try/catch to OnStart because .NET/SCM swallows exceptions:

protected override void OnStart(String[] args) {
    try {

    } catch(Exception e) {
        // log exception:
        throw;
    }
}

Answer 2

Although this thread is rather old, here my additional answer, as it might help other save time where I put some hours into:

Situation

• Windows service written in C# that monitors a directory and posts parsed message from file to MQTT topic runs fine on Win10 and also during short tests on WinXP at home

• In production environment, service runs on Win10 fine, on WinXP crashes after some hours and cannot be restarted (Could not start the filemqttservice service on Local Computer. Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion)

Solution

Clear event log history! (Doh!) My service was too chatty to fill the event log buffer in some hours. After clearing the event log, the service started again. Of course, I removed all the lines producing messages from the service