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James Crowley
Asked: 2012-01-05 06:24:49 +0800 CST

Windows Services don't automatically start after reboot?

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We've got some Windows services written in .NET. They start fine manually within the services mmc, but despite being set to Automatic, they never start when powering on (or rebooting) the machine.

Update In the event log, instead of seeing "xyz started", alongside all the other services starting, I just see "The xyz service entered the stopped state." and a seperate error that says "A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the slsvc service.".

If I manually start them, then I get a normal entry in the event log as expected, and all is fine - until the next Windows Update patch which forces a reboot and all the services are off again.

Any ideas? I've tried setting them to Delayed Start with no apparent difference.

windows service .net

4 Answers

  1. There is a fix for that. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922918

    The thing is, a service might require ldap or another remote access an is experiencing delays because of this. This can especially happen when the server is starting. By extending the delay you can ensure the service will start.

    Better would of course be to troubleshoot why this service takes so long to start. Is your environment unersized? Have you got performance issues on a service that is being polled by the service being delayed to start?

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  2. What do you mean when you say "we've got some Windows services"? That suggest to me that they're created internally by someone within your organisation? If so then you're in a better position to debug them than anyone else here - what dependencies do these services have on windows components and are your programmers considered testing for the availability of these services and waiting for them to come online when your services start?

    Have you considered setting these services as a dependency of the software licensing service (that's what slsvc is)?

    from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/193888

    To create a new dependency, select the subkey representing the service you want to delay, click Edit, and then click Add Value. Create a new value name "DependOnService" (without the quotation marks) with a data type of REG_MULTI_SZ, and then click OK. When the Data dialog box appears, type the name or names of the services that you prefer to start before this service with one entry for each line, and then click OK.

    The name of the service you would enter in the Data dialog box is the exact name of the service as it appears in the registry under the Services key.

    When the computer starts, it uses this entry to verify that the service or services listed in this value are started before attempting to start the dependent service.

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  3. Try with this:

    Run the following command to define a trigger event that suits your environment. In this example, the command determines whether an IP address is given to a host, and then it starts or stops the service.

    sc triggerinfo w32time start/networkon stop/networkoff

    where w32Time is your service name

    or try this

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/922918

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  4. The Microsoft Windows Service Control Manager controls the state (i.e., started, stopped, paused, etc.) of all installed Windows services. By default, the Service Control Manager will wait 30,000 milliseconds (30 seconds) for a service to respond. Certain configurations, technical restrictions, or performance issues may result in the service taking longer than 30 seconds to start and report ready to the Service Control Manager.

    By editing or creating the ServicesPipeTimeout DWORD value, the Service Control Manager timeout period can be overridden, thereby giving the service more time to start up and report ready to the service.

    How to make it ?

    1. Go to Start > Run > and type regedit
    2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
    3. With the control folder selected, right click in the pane on the right and select new DWORD Value
    4. Name the new DWORD: ServicesPipeTimeout
    5. Right-click ServicesPipeTimeout, and then click Modify
    6. Click Decimal, type '180000', and then click OK
    7. Restart the computer

    Note: The recommendation above increases the timeout to 180,000 milliseconds (3 minutes), but this may need to be increased further depending on your environment. Keep in mind that increasing this value will likely yield longer server boot times.

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