Windows Service Status

[Guest]

In searching this site, i have seen plenty of posts and answers detailing how
to check the status of a service.

Many services, however, will "hang". Their status says that are running,
but in reality the service is non-responsive.

In light of this, I am using the ExecuteCommand method of the specified
servicecontroller to "ping" teh service. In that method I pass it a command
(an arbitrary number higher than 245). My understanding is that Services
will ignore commands that they don't recognize. Such as:

If ServiceName.Status = ServicecontrollerStatus.running then
ServiceName.Executecommand(248)
end if

My thinking is that if the service is "hung" or nonresponsive, it will error
out and fall into my Try-Catch which tells me it is hung, otherwise it will
just ignore the command and continue.

Is my thinking correct in this?

Scott

 

[Stephany Young]

If you do what you indicate and the service is not 'geared-up' to handle
that command you will get an InvalidOperationException, as is stated in the
documentation for the ServiceController.ExecuteCommand method.

A 'well behaved' service will, when it fails internally, write appropriate
messages to the EventLog and take itself down cleanly.

As you have noticed, not all services are 'well-behaved'. Unfortunately
there isn't much you can do about this other than go to the supplier of the
service, thump the table and demand that they 'play the game'.