Chapter 31: Windows Services

Overview

Modern, multitasking operating systems often need to run applications that operate in the background and that are independent of the user who is logged in. From Windows NT to Windows Vista, such applications are called Windows Services (formerly known as NT Services). The tasks carried out by Windows Services are typically long running and have little or no direct interaction with a user (so they don’t usually have user interfaces). Such applications may be started when the computer is booted and often continue to run until the computer is shut down.

This chapter covers the following:

• The characteristics of a Windows Service

• How to interact with a Windows Service using Visual Studio 2005 and the management applets in the Windows Control Panel

• How to create, install, and communicate with a Windows Service using Visual Basic

• How to debug a Windows Service from within Visual Studio 2005

As VB6 did not offer direct support for the creation of Windows Services, you might be unfamiliar with such applications. To help you understand the variety of such applications, this chapter examines some scenarios for which a Windows Service application is a good solution.