Starting a windows service fails with error 1053

Question

I have a windows service that is failing to start, giving an error \"Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion\".

Answer 1

This is a misleading error. It's probably an unhandled exception.

Empty your OnStart() handler then try this in your constructor...

    public MainService()
    {
        InitializeComponent();

        try
        {
            // All your initialization code goes here.

            // For instance, my exception was caused by the lack of registry permissions
            ;
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            EventLog.WriteEntry("Application", ex.ToString(), EventLogEntryType.Error);
        }
    }

Now check the EventLog on your system for your Application Error.