This article shows how to access the windows services in your system and change the behavior of the services from your application.

The example application with this article shows a simple windows application which fetches the services into a ListView and changing its status by click of the button.

This application uses ServiceController component to connect to and control the behavior of existing services.

I have used the GetServices() method on the ServiceController class to retrieve a list of the services on a particular computer. The GetServices method returns an array of all of a computer's available services, except for those associated with device drivers. You can retrieve the device driver services using the GetDevices method.

Fetching Services:

Here is the code to fetch all the services:

private void listService()

{

ServiceController[] ser;

ser = ServiceController.GetServices();

listView1.Items.Clear();

for (int i = 0; i < ser.Length; i++)

{

string str1=ser[i].ServiceName;

System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController sc2 = new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController(str1);

listView1.Items.Add(str1);

if (sc2.Status.Equals(System.ServiceProcess.ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped))

{

listView1.Items[i].ForeColor=Color.Red;

listView1.Items[i].SubItems.Add("Stopped");

}

else

{

listView1.Items[i].ForeColor=Color.Blue;

listView1.Items[i].SubItems.Add("Started");

}

}

}

Here I have ListView control with two columns. The first column display's the service name and the second column displays the current status.

Different row color is given for services whose status is stopped or started.

Starting Service:

The code below shows how to start the service whose status is stopped now:

private void StartService()

{

ListView.SelectedListViewItemCollection seltest = listView1.SelectedItems;

ListViewItem lt = seltest[0];

string str1 = lt.Text;

string str2 ="Already Started";

DialogResult res;

System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController sc2 = new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController(str1);

if (sc2.Status.Equals(System.ServiceProcess.ServiceControllerStatus.Running))

{

res=MessageBox.Show(this,str2);

}

else

if (sc2.Status.Equals(System.ServiceProcess.ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped))

{

sc2.Start();

}

listService();
}

Stopping Service:

The code below shows how to stop the service whose status is started now:

private void StopService()

{

ListView.SelectedListViewItemCollection seltest = listView1.SelectedItems;

ListViewItem lt = seltest[0];

string str1 = lt.Text;

string str2 ="Already Stopped";

DialogResult res;

System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController sc2 = new System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController(str1);

if (sc2.Status.Equals(System.ServiceProcess.ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped))

{

res=MessageBox.Show(this,str2);

}

else

if (sc2.Status.Equals(System.ServiceProcess.ServiceControllerStatus.Running))

{

sc2.Stop();

}

listService();

}

All I have done here in above two codes is to check the status of the selected service from ListView. Depending upon the status I am changing the status to start or stop by calling Start() and Stop() method of the ServiceController class.

In this example application, I have also used the ContextMenu. One can start and stop the service by right clicking on the service name and clicking the appropriate option.

Here is the snapshot of the application:

Until next time.

Happy .NETing!