Moving a C# Windows Service to Windows 7

Problems moving a Windows Service to Windows 7

I have just been given a new PC at work that runs 64bit Windows 7. I have to say so far I quite impressed with the OS and the great thing about Windows 7 is that I can now install IE 9.0 which is blindingly fast and they have finally seen the light and made it standards compliant with support for the DOM 2 event model.

One of the jobs I struggled with today though was making a Windows Service that I had created on my old XP machine in Visual Studio 2010 run on my new box.

The service is basically a BOT that makes SOAP requests behind the scenes to a 3rd party server.

The code was working fine as I had moved it all from a standalone console application that worked but whenever my service harness EXE tried to run I would just get bland _COMPlusExceptionCode errors and nothing of any meaning in the event log.

Debugging a Windows Service was a right pain in the behind and after many uninstalls, installs and lots of shouting I finally got it working.

These steps might not work for everyone but I had to do all of the following to get my service working.

1. Access Rights. Even though I supposedly had administrative rights on my PC I couldn't even install the service with the installUtil [path to exe] command without having to right click on the correct Visual Studio command prompt and choosing "Run as administrator".

However even after doing this I was still having problems starting the service and I was getting the standard

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

Error message whenever I tried starting the service from the service administrative tool or from my desktop wrapper application.

After some step through debugging I found an "Access Denied" error message was occurring on the ServiceController.Start() method call so I went into the User Account Control Settings and turned the scrolling control right down to "Never Notify". As I wasn't allowed the logon details for the Local System account I was using my own login details for the service as this seemed to be the only way to get round this error message with a reboot.

2. Rebuilding the Service as an x64 solution and not x86. I tried this due to a weird win32 error I was seeing and just put 2 and 2 together and presumed that something was not being run correctly due to it now being on a 64 bit machine.

3. Adding the following code to the config file:

<runtime>
  <generatePublisherEvidence enabled="false"/>
</runtime>

I obtained this clue from the following site: stackoverflow.com and it seemed to be the final part of the jigsaw that finally got my service and the wrapper application working on my new machine.

I am fully aware that I am not describing all the reasons behind the decisions I made but I am not exactly aware of the whys and hows at this point in time. However if I come up with further answers I will let you know. Plus if anyone else has any useful links or tips about this issue please add them to the comment section.