C# – Debugging a Windows Service

You have at least three options. I have presented them in order of usage preference.

Method 1 - You can use the SC tool (Sc.exe) included in the Resource Kit. (included with Windows 7/8)

Open a Command Prompt and enter

sc delete <service-name>

Tool help snippet follows:

DESCRIPTION:
        SC is a command line program used for communicating with the
        NT Service Controller and services.

delete----------Deletes a service (from the registry).

Method 2 - use delserv

Download and use delserv command line utility. This is a legacy tool developed for Windows 2000. In current Window XP boxes this was superseded by sc described in method 1.

Method 3 - manually delete registry entries (Note that this backfires in Windows 7/8)

Windows services are registered under the following registry key.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services

Search for the sub-key with the service name under referred key and delete it. (and you might need to restart to remove completely the service from the Services list)

In your Installer class, add a handler for the AfterInstall event. You can then call the ServiceController in the event handler to start the service.

using System.ServiceProcess;
public ServiceInstaller()
{
    //... Installer code here
    this.AfterInstall += new InstallEventHandler(ServiceInstaller_AfterInstall);
}

void ServiceInstaller_AfterInstall(object sender, InstallEventArgs e)
{
    ServiceInstaller serviceInstaller = (ServiceInstaller)sender;

    using (ServiceController sc = new ServiceController(serviceInstaller.ServiceName))
    {
             sc.Start();
    }
}

Now when you run InstallUtil on your installer, it will install and then start up the service automatically.