Get Windows Server shutdown reason in C#

Question

Hi,

is it possible to get shutdown reason in Windows Server 2008 immediately after user choose the reason in dialog window? For the shutdown event i'm using SystemEvents.SessionEnding.. I want to write windows service, which will send e-mail about this event.

Or is there any other way in windows server to send e-mails about shutdown/restart event with getting the reason entered by user? Also i want to notify about power source change (electic line/battery), but this i have already solved by Kernel32.dll > GetSystemPowerStatus.

Thanks for advice

Answer 1

sure it's possible. in case you want to get that comboBox value in real-time, you will need to run a Thread monitor on that process to raise an event when that value change.

Answer 2

You can get the shutdown reason inspecting the EventLog.

I assembled a quick demo on Windows Forms that you can adapt to your Windows service.

I've added a EventLog component to the Form and configured it properly. The snippet below shows the code generated in InitializeComponent() for the settings I've maid through the designer.

this.eventLog1.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
this.eventLog1.Log = "System";
this.eventLog1.Source = "USER32";
this.eventLog1.SynchronizingObject = this;
this.eventLog1.EntryWritten += new System.Diagnostics.EntryWrittenEventHandler(this.eventLog1_EntryWritten);

On the event handler, you'll have something along the following lines:

private void eventLog1_EntryWritten(object sender, System.Diagnostics.EntryWrittenEventArgs e)
{
    EventLogEntry entry = e.Entry;
    if (e.Entry.EventID == 1074)
    {
        File.AppendAllText(@"c:\message.txt", entry.Message);
    }
}

Take a loot at your event log to see the appropriate EventIds to filter out.

The compiler will warn you about EventID being deprecated and telling you that you should use InstanceId, but in the quick tests I've done here, it didn't write to my log file and I think we already have enough information to put you on track.