What is a Windows Service?

 

Chapter 22 - Windows Services
bySimon Robinsonet al.
Wrox Press 2002

  

Windows Services are applications that can be automatically started when the operating system boots. They can run without having an interactive user logged on to the system. We can configure a Windows Service to be run from a specially configured user account; or from the system user account - a user account that has even more privileges than that of the System Administrator.

Important 

Windows Services don't run on Windows 95, 98, or ME; the NT kernel is a requirement. Windows Services do run on Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP.

From now on, unless any confusion should arise, we shall refer to a Windows Service simply as a service.

Here are few examples of services:

• Simple TCP/IP Services is a service program that hosts some small TCP/IP servers: echo, daytime, quote, and others

• World Wide Publishing Service is the service of the Internet Information Server

• Event Log is a service to log messages to the event log system

• Microsoft Search is a service that creates indexes of data on the disk

We can use the Component Services administrative tool to see all of the services on a system. On a Windows 2000 Server this program can be accessed from Start Programs Administrative Tools Services ; on Windows 2000 Professional the program is accessible from Settings Control Panel Administrative Tools Services :