How to run a dotnet windows service as a console app. C Windows services can be a pain to develop because they are awkward to test, debug and run locally. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. C Windows services can be a pain to develop because they are awkward to test, debug and run locally. However a few tweaks to the default VS template make them far. This guidance has been updated to cover the 1703 Creators Update of Windows 10 Enterprise. It builds on the previous 1607 Anniversary Edition guidance. Here Mudassar Ahmed Khan has explained how to build a simple Windows Service that runs periodically at regular intervals and as well as once a day at specific. The core function of a Windows Service is to run an application in the background. Learn how to create a Windows Service using VB. NET. Add a ProjectInstaller open the service in design mode, view properties, and click Add Installer, and you have the windows service, ready for installation. Chapter 4. Message Queuing. Message Queuing Overview 4. Whats New in EmailAgent. NET 4. 3 Manual Installation 4. EmailAgent. NET Service Configuration. To install your service manually. On the Windows Start menu or Start screen, choose Visual Studio, Visual Studio Tools, Developer Command Prompt. A Visual Studio. Navigation. This page assumes the Enterprise Layer Manager has already been imported and configured. See Create and update the OS Layer in Unidesk 4. George. However a few tweaks to the default VS template make them far more manageable. Why use a windows service in the first place At first glance a Windows Service looks like old tech in an age of http everywhere. However they are a reliable proven platform that is easy to deploy, easy to remotely monitor, and it is actually trivial to embed a web server inside one and ditch IIS entirely. This makes them a good fit for running background tasks as a companion to your website, or for services where IIS is overkill or unwanted dependency. Windows services can run on any windows box without dependencies like IIS, auto start on boot and run as a given user if needed. Popular. net dev web apps like Teamcity and Octopus Deploy run as Windows Services they are a proven platform for web apps too. The default development experience is painful. My biggest complaint is that the development experience is poor compared to traditional web or console apps. The default template is basically a console app with a special Service. Cannot Start Service Installutil Exe' title='Cannot Start Service Installutil Exe' />Designer class with an On. Canon T2i Software Disk Download here. StartOn. Stop method for you to place your code. When you try and run the executable or F5 debug, you just get the Windows Service Start Failure error Cannot start service from the command line or a debugger. A Windows Service must first be installed using Install. Util. exe and then started with the Server Explorer, Windows Services Administrative Tool or the NET START command. Not very helpful. Microsofts guide to debugging services is an eleven step process to get a not quite normal attached debug experience. And add to that Install. Util. exe is probably not available on your deployment destination so you may need to bundle it with your release which is why I always install with sc. What if it was just a console app Topshelf There is a great library for simplifying Windows Service development called Topshelf. It has a set of features for simplifying installation and by default supports running the service on the console, giving us back a decent development experience however I usually find it has more features than I need. What i want can be achieved with a few lines of code. Change to the default template to get F5 debugging and run as a console support Step 1 Add a public Run. As. Console method to your service class. Run. As. Consolestring args. On. Startargs. Console. Write. LinePress any key to exit. Console. Read. Line. On. Stop. Step 2 Opt out of the Service. Base when running as a console. Change Program. cs main method so it opts out of full service mode when running in interactive mode i. Service Controller static class Program. Mainstring args. My. Service service new My. Service. if Environment. User. Interactive. Run. As. Consoleargs. Service. Base Services. To. Run. Services. To. Run new Service. Base service. Service. Base. RunServices. To. Run. Step 3 Change the output type. The default Output Type in the Windows Service template is Windows Application. Change this to Console Application in the projects Properties. This will make no difference to your service, but now you can actually debug your application. Console for development, Service for production. Run your service. You now have F5 debug support by default and if you run your executable it will behave just like a console application. But if you install it as a service, it will work just as expected.