Starting a windows service fails with error 1053 - windows-services

Question

I have a windows service that is failing to start, giving an error "Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion".
Running the service in my debugger works fine, and if I double click on the the service .exe on the remote machine a console window pops up and continues to run without problem - I can even see log messages showing me that the program is processing everything the way it should be.
The service had been running fine previously, though this is my first time, personally, trying to deploy it with the most recent changes made to the program. I've evaluated those changes and cant figure out how they might cause this problem, particuarly since everything runs fine when not started as a service.
The StartRoutine() method of the service impelmentation is empty, so should be returning in a "timely fashion".
I've checked the event logs on the computer, and it doesn't give any additional information other than it didn't hear back from the service in the 30 second requisite time frame.
Since it works on my machine, and as a double-clicked executable, how would I go about figuring out why it fails as a service?
Oh, and it's .NET 2.0, so it shouldn't be affected by the 1.1 framework bug that exhibited this symptom (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/839174)
The box is a windows server 2003 R2 machine running SP2.

Answer 1

This is a misleading error. It's probably an unhandled exception.
Empty your OnStart() handler then try this in your constructor...
public MainService()
{
InitializeComponent();
try
{
// All your initialization code goes here.
// For instance, my exception was caused by the lack of registry permissions
;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
EventLog.WriteEntry("Application", ex.ToString(), EventLogEntryType.Error);
}
}
Now check the EventLog on your system for your Application Error.

Answer 2

Could be a number of things and it might help to get a stack trace on the machine exhibiting the problem. There are a number of ways to do this but the point is that you have to see where this is failing in the code.
You can do this with remote debugging, but a simple thing might be to just log to the event logger, or file log if you have that. Literally, putting "WriteLine("At class::function()") throughout portions of the code to see if you've made it there.
This will at least get you looking in the right direction (which ultimately is the code).
Update:
See Microsoft's How to Debug Windows Services article for details in troubleshooting startup problems using WinDbg.
This related question details nice ways to debug services that are written in .NET.

Answer 3

I agree with Scott, the easiest way to find out what's happening is to put some traces in the start-up code (maybe it doesn't even come to your start-up code).
If this doesn't help, you can post your code here so others can take a look.

Answer 4

perhaps lacking some dependence, try this :
- deregister your service
- register again
If fail at register means that lack an module.

Answer 5

If the StartRoutine is empty, you are probably starting it somewhere else.
IIRC you need to fire off a worker thread, and then return from StartRoutine.

Answer 6

One of the problems which may lead to this error is if windows service which needs to be deployed consists of some error i.e it may be simple authorization error or anything as in my case I have referenced some folders and files for logging which were not existing, but when provided the right path of those file and folders it solved my problem.

Answer 7

I ran through every post on this particular subject and none of the responses solved the problem, so I'm adding this response in case this helps someone else. Admittedly this only applies to a new service, not this specific case.
I was writing a File listening service. As a console app, it worked perfectly. When I ran it as a service, I got the same error as above. What I didn't know (and many of the MSDN articles about services conveniently leave out) is that you need to have your class executed from within ServiceBase.Run( YourClassName());. Otherwise, your app executes and immediately terminates and because it terminated, you get the error above even if no error or exception occurred. Here is a link to an article about this. It actually discusses setting up your app for dual use - Console app and service: Create a combo command line / Windows service app

Answer 8

I had that issue and the source of my problem was config file. I edited it in notepad and notepad added one special character which cause service not to run properly because config file was ruined. I saw that special character in notepadd++ and after delete it, service started to run successfully as previous did.

Answer 9

In my case, the correct .NET framework was not installed on the server that I was installing the Windows service on.

Answer 10

One other reason is If you copy the DLL in 'debug' mode to installation folder this issue will come.What you need to do is Run the project in 'Release' mode copy the DLL or directly form Release folder rather than Debug folder,,and copy that DLL in to installation folder,it will work.You can see the reduction in size of DLL ,it will not contain any debug symbols and like that