Why does my .NET Windows service not start automatically sometimes?

Question

Hi all,

I have modified a working Windows service that had always been starting beforehand. After adding the System.Management reference it now sometimes will not start automatically. I get the following error:

Service cannot be started. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80010002): Call was canceled by the message filter. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80010002 (RPC_E_CALL_CANCELED))

I found another post here on SO with someone having the same issue.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/998883/why-wont-my-net-windows-service-start-automatically-after-a-reboot

However, the proposed solution was to have the service start after the services it depends on have started. However, when I go to the Dependencies tab for my service, I see:

Should I just use the workaround method of putting the thread to sleep, or is there a more proper way of getting this service to start correctly? Is this happening because .NET has not started before my service starts?

Thanks,

Tomek

EDIT: I have added a try-catch statement to catch the exception. Here is the code that I added to the OnStart() method of my service (which is where the exception is being thrown)

        try
        {
            _watcher = new ManagementEventWatcher(query);
            _watcher.EventArrived += new EventArrivedEventHandler(watcher_EventArrived);
            _watcher.Start();  
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            EventLog.WriteEntry("Could not create Sleep/Resume watcher" + ex.Message);
        }

The service does start now but without the functionality that I have added. I am new to .NET, but I took the watcher code from a sample I found online, so I am pretty sure it is correct. The Event Log displays the same exception:

Could not create Sleep/Resume watcher Call was canceled by the message filter. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80010002 (RPC_E_CALL_CANCELED))

Answer 1

The problem isn't with the service itself, it's that the new component you added a reference to is throwing an unhandled exception (Call was canceled by the message filter). Troubleshoot that error message with whatever code you added, and/or put in better error handling so that an error in that component will not bubble up to the top and cause the service to stop :-)

Answer 2

If you depend on another service, us sc.exe to configure your service to start after the dependency. This cannot be done through the Services applet.

Answer 3

I ended up using Thread.Sleep(10000) right before I create the ManagementEventWatcher (before the try statement)

It is kind of a workaround, but it did fix the problem.