Using a Windows Service to run an other Application

Question

Hi,

I have a windows application that updates somedata every 10 mins. I need to make sure that this application keeps running.
I was thinking of having a service with a timer that checks if the application is running and if not it fires it up.

Can you help me out with this.

Answer 1

Why your application may not be running, ?

In case somebody close it ?

You can make an application impossible to close

Simply like that:

Public Class Form1

    Private Sub Form1_FormClosing(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.FormClosingEventArgs) Handles Me.FormClosing
        e.Cancel = True ' This make the application impossible to close
    End Sub

    Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load
        'Your code
    End Sub

End Class

Answer 2

That's a good suggestion. i will include it in my code. Thanks

But I had in mind of using a service because the application will be running on a server. So i needed that even if a user is not logged on the machine...the application would be started off by the service automatically....especially when a restart to the server would have been done remotely or so....

Answer 3

Thank you Crazypennie for your friendly help and good suggestion.

Hi Alex,

Welcome to MSDN forums!

Here is code sample: How to create a Windows Service and check if specified application has been run via Timer object in VB.NET.

Public Class Service1       Private Timer1 As System.Timers.Timer       Protected Overrides Sub OnStart(ByVal args() As String)         Timer1 = New System.Timers.Timer()         AddHandler Timer1.Elapsed, AddressOf Timer_Elapsed         Timer1.Interval = 1000         Timer1.Start()     End Sub       Protected Overrides Sub OnStop()         Timer1.Stop()     End Sub       Private Sub Timer_Elapsed(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.Timers.ElapsedEventArgs)         'Check if your application has been run.         Dim proeslist As Process() = Process.GetProcessesByName("ApplicationName")         If proeslist.Count = 0 Then             Process.Start("D:\AppFolder\AppName.exe") ' Here start your application         End If           ' Additionally, you can check each process'title and name like this:         Dim pro As Process         For Each pro In proeslist             Dim winTitle As String = pro.MainWindowTitle             Dim pName As String = pro.ProcessName         Next     End Sub   End Class

 

Best regards,
Martin Xie

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Answer 4

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your reply.

I managed to put the service at work. In fact the application is started but after a while it closes itself down again.

Am i missing something. When i run the application standalone it works fine.

I am also getting an error event in the application when the application is shutdown on it's own.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting
Event Category: None
Event ID: 5000
Date:  03/11/2009
Time:  16:49:16
User:  N/A
Computer: OMEGA
Description:
EventType clr20r3, P1 kreaschedule.exe, P2 1.0.54.0, P3 4af04f0a, P4 kreaschedule, P5 1.0.54.0, P6 4af04f0a, P7 e, P8 e9, P9 system.invalidoperationexception, P10 NIL.