What can Services do under Windows?

Question

Does anyone have a good guide to capabilities of Windows Services under XP? In particular, I am trying to find out what happens when a program being run as a service tries t

Answer 1

A service in Microsoft Windows is a program that runs whenever the computer is running the operating system. It does not require a user to be logged on. Services are needed to perform user-independent tasks such as directory replication, process monitoring, or services to other machines on a network, such as support for the Internet HTTP protocol

Usually it is implemented as a console application that runs in the background and performs tasks that don't require user interaction.

The installed services can be configured through the Services applet, available from Control Panel --> Administrative Tools in Windows 2000/XP.

Services can be configured to start automatically when operating system starts, so you dont have to start each of them manually after a system reboot.

1. Creating a Simple Service - MSDN Article
2. Writing Windows Services Made easy - Code Project Article
3. Five Steps to Writing Windows Services in C - DevX Article