How do I debug Windows services in Visual Studio?

Question

Is it possible to debug the Windows services in Visual Studio?

I used code like

System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();

but it is givi

Answer 1

Try Visual Studio's very own post-build event command line.

Try to add this in post-build:

@echo off
sc query "ServiceName" > nul
if errorlevel 1060 goto install
goto stop

:delete
echo delete
sc delete "ServiceName" > nul
echo %errorlevel%
goto install

:install
echo install
sc create "ServiceName" displayname= "Service Display Name" binpath= "$(TargetPath)" start= auto > nul
echo %errorlevel%
goto start

:start
echo start
sc start "ServiceName" > nul
echo %errorlevel%
goto end

:stop
echo stop
sc stop "ServiceName" > nul
echo %errorlevel%
goto delete

:end

If the build error with a message like Error 1 The command "@echo off sc query "ServiceName" > nul so on, Ctrl + C then Ctrl + V the error message into Notepad and look at the last sentence of the message.

It could be saying exited with code x. Look for the code in some common error here and see how to resolve it.

1072 -- Marked for deletion → Close all applications that maybe using the service including services.msc and Windows event log.
1058 -- Can't be started because disabled or has no enabled associated devices → just delete it.
1060 -- Doesn't exist → just delete it.
1062 -- Has not been started → just delete it.
1053 -- Didn't respond to start or control → see event log (if logged to event log). It may be the service itself throwing an exception.
1056 -- Service is already running → stop the service, and then delete.

More on error codes here.

And if the build error with message like this,

Error    11    Could not copy "obj\x86\Debug\ServiceName.exe" to "bin\Debug\ServiceName.exe". Exceeded retry count of 10. Failed.    ServiceName
Error    12    Unable to copy file "obj\x86\Debug\ServiceName.exe" to "bin\Debug\ServiceName.exe". The process cannot access the file 'bin\Debug\ServiceName.exe' because it is being used by another process.    ServiceName

open cmd, and then try to kill it first with taskkill /fi "services eq ServiceName" /f

If all is well, F5 should be sufficient to debug it.