Windows service timer thread

Sleep so I figured I would try to use a timer instead as this question recommends:. Using Thread. Sleep in a Windows Service. Thing is it's not entirely clear to me how one might implement this.

I believe this is the way but I just wanted to make sure:. Aside from using VB. Net Kidding, but I'd be using C if I could. Is this better than using Thread. First of all, the actual code posted doesn't really make sense; the worker thread is waiting for a signal but for no reason - it's not actually in a loop of any kind or waiting for a resource. Second, if you did need to execute some perhaps omitted cleanup code in the worker after receiving the shutdown signal, your service might not give the worker thread enough time to clean up.

But, more fundamentally, all you've done is move the problem to a separate thread. This may keep the service responsive to the service controller but it doesn't fix the design problem - and it adds a lot of unnecessary complexity by using the threads and mutexes; ultimately it's just going to make your service harder to debug if you ever need to.

Let's say you need to execute some code every 5 seconds. The idea is, instead of "waiting" 5 seconds, you invert the control, and let the timer invoke your work. That's it. That's all you have to do to do work at regular intervals. As long as the work itself doesn't run for seconds at a time, your service will remain responsive to the service controller. You can even support pausing under this scenario:. The only time when you need to start creating worker threads in your service is when the work itself can run for a very long time and you need the ability to cancel in the middle.

That tends to involve a good deal of design effort, so I won't get into that without knowing for sure that it's related to your scenario. It's best not to start introducing multithreaded semantics into your service unless you really need it. If you're just trying to schedule small-ish units of work to be done, you definitely don't need it. But I didn't need a timer.

AddRange New System. ServiceProcessInstaller1, Me. Making the Windows Service Automatically start after Installation. After the installation one has to start the Windows Service manually through the Services section of My Computer Management. We can start the Windows Service automatically after installation by making use of the AfterInstall event handler which triggers immediately after Windows Service is installed.

You will need to open the ProjectInstaller class and override the AfterInstall event handler and add the code to start the Windows Service. OnAfterInstall savedState ;. ServiceController serviceInstaller1. Start ;. Public Class ProjectInstaller. Public Sub New. OnAfterInstall savedState.

ServiceController ServiceInstaller1. Installing the Windows Service using InstallUtil. Once all the processes are complete, we can now build the Windows Service. Note : Once the Windows Service is ready for deployment, it is recommended to make use of the Release version of the EXE file instead of the Debug version. Now copy and build the path in a Notepad Text file. Note : I would recommend to build the command in a Notepad and save it somewhere so that you can use it multiple times.

InstallUtil Syntax. Note : I am making use of Visual Studio , and hence you need to use the appropriate version installed on your computer. And make sure you are logged in as Administrator.

Without Administrator rights it would not allow you to install the Windows Service. In the command prompt window, copy the InstallUtil command from Notepad and right click in the Command Prompt and click Paste and then press Enter key.

Now the Installer will ask for Logon permissions to run the Windows Service and hence you will need to add Windows Username and Password of user who has appropriate permission. Note : Username must include Domain Name or the Computer name. After successful installation you will see the following message.

You can find the Windows Service in the Services window. In order to open Services window in the Run Command type, services. Uninstalling the Windows Service using InstallUtil. The syntax for uninstalling a Windows Service is very similar to the installation syntax. After successful uninstallation you will see the following message.

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If an exception occurs during the running of the task, set it to false. Then utilize an if block to only restart the timer if the last run was successful. You are only ever modifying the timer in one thread. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Proper use of timer in windows service Ask Question. Asked 6 years, 7 months ago. Active 6 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 54k times. ElapsedEventHandler this. Also stop the timer. Improve this question.

Timer class, which is a slightly nicer wrapper. I agree with previous comment that might be best to consider a different approach. My suggest would be write a console application and use the windows scheduler:. As already stated both System. Timer will work. The big difference between the two is that System. Timer is a wrapper arround the other one. Timer will have more exception handling while System.

Timer will swallow all the exceptions. This gave me big problems in the past so I would always use 'System. Timer' and still handle your exceptions very well.

I know this thread is a little old but it came in handy for a specific scenario I had and I thought it worth while to note that there is another reason why System. Timer might be a good approach. When you have to periodically execute a Job that might take a long time and you want to ensure that the entire waiting period is used between jobs or if you don't want the job to run again before the previous job has finished in the case where the job takes longer than the timer period.

You could use the following:. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Best Timer for using in a Windows service Ask Question. Asked 13 years, 2 months ago. Active 6 years, 6 months ago. Viewed k times. Active Oldest Votes. Timer like the following example also, make sure that you use a class level variable to prevent garbage collection, as stated in Tim Robinson's answer : using System; using System.

See end of method. WriteLine "Press the Enter key to exit the program. Timer , you can use as follows: using System; using System.