Summary

In this chapter, you learned about creating and managing Windows service applications. We covered the following topics:

• An introduction to how Windows services work

• How to view existing Windows services by using system tools such as the Service Control Manager and the Event Viewer

• How Visual Studio .NET helps you to create the foundations of a Windows service application

• The properties and methods of the .NET Framework ServiceBase class

• How to use Visual Studio .NET to add .NET Framework components, such as the Project Installers and an EventLog, to your project directly from the Toolbox

• How to add custom code to the OnStart and OnStop methods of a Windows service

• How to attach the Visual Studio .NET debugger to a running Windows service

• How to use the .NET Framework ServiceController class to control a Windows service from application code

• How to code custom commands for a Windows service and how to call them from a ServiceController object