How to properly stop a multi-threaded .NET windows service?

Question

I have a windows service written in C# that creates a truck load of threads and makes many network connections (WMI, SNMP, simple TCP, http). When attempting to stop the win

Answer 1

To answer the first question (Why would the service continue to run for 30+ seconds): there are many reasons. For instance, when using WCF, stopping a the Host causes the process to stop accepting incoming requests, and it waits to process all current requests before stopping.

The same would hold true for may other types of network operations: the operations would attempt to complete before terminating. This is why most network requests have a built-in timeout value for when the request may have "hung" (server gone down, network problems, etc).

Without more information on what exactly it is you are doing there is not way to tell you specifically why it's taking 30 seconds, but it's probably a timeout.

To answer the second question (Why is the service controller returning): I'm not sure. I know that the ServiceController class has a WaitForState method that allows you to wait untill the given state is reached. It is possible that the service controller is waiting for a predetermined time (another timeout) and then forcibly terminating your application.

It is also very possible that the base.OnStop method has been called, and the OnStop method has returned, signalling to the ServiceController that the process has stopped, when in fact there are some threads that have not stopped. you are responsible for termingating these threads.