Enable and disable startup programs in c#

Awadhendra Tiwari

I am trying to make a program in which I can view all startup services and their status such as whether they are enabled or disable. As well as I would like to provide functionality toenable and disable startup program. But I am not able to perform this task. Can somebody help me to perform this task? I am using visual studio 2010 and C# language.

Thanks in advance.

3 Replies

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Vulpes15y ago
You can do a lot with the System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController class such as:

1. Get a list of services (except device drivers) running on the local machine by calling the GetServices() method.

2. Get a list of device drivers with the GetDevices() method.

3. Stop, Start, Pause and Continue a service and check first whether these actions are permitted or not.

However, what you can't do is to determine whether a service starts up automatically when the system is booted or whether it's currently disabled. To do this you need to interrogate the StartMode property of the WMI class Win32_Service. This class also has a method called ChangeStartMode which you can use to disable or enable a service.

The following links may be useful:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.serviceprocess.servicecontroller.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394418(VS.85).aspx

http://www.dotnetspider.com/resources/30243-How-start-stop-service-using-C.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/WMI_Services_Manipulation.aspx
Suthish Nair15y ago
Lots of samples available startup services + c#
Sam Hobbs15y ago
See Autoruns for Windows. I don't know if there is source code for it and if there is it is probably in C++. You could at least see all the possible places to look for autorun software and then you need to figure out how to read each one. Note that there are multiple places to look at and each place is a separate question. For example reading the registry is different from other places that need to be looked at.