How to find windows service exe path

Question

Hi, I have a windows service and I need to create directory to store some info. The directory path must be relative to the windows service exe file. How can get this exe file path ?

Answer 1

You can use AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory

Answer 2

Instead of using a directory relative to the executable, and therefore needing admin privileges, why not use the common application data directory, which is accessible through

Environment.GetFolderPath(SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData)

This way your app doesn't need write access to its own install directory, which makes you more secure.

Answer 3

m_baseDir = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory +
                       AppDomain.CurrentDomain.RelativeSearchPath;

hope this will help you

Answer 4

The default directory for a windows service is the System32 folder. In your service, though, you can change the current directory to the directory that you specified in the service installation by doing the following in your OnStart:

        // Define working directory (For a service, this is set to System)
        // This will allow us to reference the app.config if it is in the same directory as the exe
        Process pc = Process.GetCurrentProcess();
        Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(pc.MainModule.FileName.Substring(0, pc.MainModule.FileName.LastIndexOf(@"\")));

Edit: an even simpler method (but I haven't tested yet):

System.IO.Directory.SetCurrentDirectory(System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory);

Answer 5

string path = Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName;
path = path.Substring(0, path.LastIndexOf("\\"));

svchost.exe is the executable which runs your service which is in system32. Hence we need to get to the module which is being run by the process.