What is the timeout for starting a windows service?

I have deployed my windows service (using independently installer class and SC.EXE), but I get an error when I try to start it:

What is the timeout? It felt like around 3 secs. What do I need to do if my service takes longer?

4 Answers 4

In your service class, use ServiceBase.RequestAdditionalTime() in your OnStart/OnStop method:

The normal way of creating a service is to have the startup code create a new thread, and run your service in that thread.

The service startup should be nearly instantaneous — nothing more than spawning a new thread with your «real» work in it.

If you’re taking more than three seconds, that’s a sign that you’re doing the real work in your main thread, and not creating a separate one for your service.

In regards to the specific question, the exact timeout varies, but is less than 30 seconds. You can control the default startup timeout for a service via a registry key, you can see how to do this here.

However, I will agree with many others that I would look at two possible options.

1. Get your service started ASAP, spawn a thread, etc..
2. If you cannot go with option one, you can use RequestAdditionalTime(). Just be sure to make this call early on.

Also if you had tested the service in different Physical environments, and it seems that the issue is not the normal startup time but the performance of the PCs. You can increase the timeout on the registry key for the specific PC.

How to extend the timeout for services if they fail to start or stop

Problem:

CodeTwo services cannot be started or stopped.

Solution:

In some environments, applications installed as Windows services may require more time to start or stop. Click on the links below to learn how to change the timeout for service applications in Windows.

A CodeTwo service is unable to start on its own and times out

To avoid the service startup problem (Fig. 1.), you can:

Fig. 1. A CodeTwo service does not start and times out.

How to delay the automatic start of a service application

If a service’s start is delayed , this service attempts to start only if critical system services have already started. To configure your service this way, you need to:

1. Run Windows Services manager (launch services.msc from the Start menu) .
2. Right-click on the service you would like to configure, and select Properties.
3. On the General tab, change the Startup type to Automatic (Delayed Start), as shown in Fig. 2. for CodeTwo Exchange Sync.

Fig. 2. Selecting the startup type of a service.

How to increase the timeout value for the service startup

Additionally, you can change the timeout value for the service startup in the Windows registry:

1. Launch Windows Registry Editor.
2. Find the following registry subkey:
3. Right-click this key and select New >DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. A new value named New Value #1 appears on the right.
5. Change the name of this new value to ServicesPipeTimeout.
6. Right-click the ServicesPipeTimeout value you created, and choose Modify. The Edit DWORD Value window opens.
7. Change Base to Decimal.

In the Value data field, type the value (in milliseconds) of time allowed for the service to start, and click OK.

In our test environment, we set the value (Fig. 3.) to 240000 ms (4 minutes), and this enabled the service to start correctly. It is permissible to set a higher value — it should not have any impact on performance.

Fig. 3. Setting a new timeout value.

A CodeTwo service does not stop

If the problem happens for the first time and you are not able to close the service from within Windows Services manager (services.msc) or Task Manager, you can kill the service using the taskkill command. See this Knowledge Base article for details.

If the problem occurs frequently, follow the steps below to extend the service closing timeout:

1. Launch Windows Registry Editor.
2. Locate this registry subkey:
3. Right-click this key and choose New >DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. A new value named New Value #1 appears in the right pane.
5. Rename the new value to WaitToKillServiceTimeout.
6. Right-click the value and select Modify. The Edit DWORD Value window pops up.
7. Change Base to Decimal.

In the Value data field, type the value (in milliseconds) of time allowed for the service to stop, and confirm by clicking OK.

By default, Windows waits 20000 ms, so you might need to set a higher value.

Windows Service “Timeout” instantly on startup

I’m currently running in to an issue where a Windows Service I wrote is «timing out» instantly on start up. The message I get is Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion. I checked Event Viewer and I see that message and another A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the X service to connect. Only problem is that it’s not waiting 30 seconds to time out, it’s more like half a second.

My service’s OnStart()

My entire service works splendidly in our development and certification environments, but won’t start in our production environment, it doesn’t seem like it’s even getting to the OnStart() because a log is never made. Things I’ve checked:

1. Made sure service had correct permissions in the necessary directories, it does
2. Made sure the correct version of .NET framework that my service is targeting (4) is installed, it is
3. Made sure Event Viewer wasn’t throwing any other types of errors that might give me a hint to what’s happening, there’s nothing
4. All of the directories for the FileSystemWatcher actually exist, they do
5. The directory for the log4net file exists, it does

I’m at a loss at the moment; any help would be awesome.

edit After double checking the .NET framework again I realize I checked the wrong server for the versions. A good way to be certain is to double-click on the actual exe file for the service and see what it says. In my case it literally said «Make sure 4.0 is installed» which prompted me to check again and there I saw that 4.0 wasn’t installed.

.net service start timeout on windows startup

I have a .net service that starts when windows starts, and sometimes ( totally random ) the service fails to start.

Event viewer shows: A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the MYSERVICE service to connect.

Even on the machines that the service fails to start if I start it manually (after windows logon ) it start fine.

My start method is very basic, it just starts a new thread with the actual start-up logic ( usually is very fast ).

My service requires .net 3.5 sp1 and the machines that are having these problems are win7 x64. I suspect that it has something to do with the .net framework, but I don’t know how. This is happening on a clients machines and he has the .net 4 client profile installed.

4 Answers 4

I’ve had problems like this one. Normally is due to the machine load on startup. For example, I had this error on SQL Server due to many other services starting too.

One simple way of fixing this is setting the service to start in delayed mode because then your service will be started under less CPU and HD load.

If it is dependent on another service then make set the dependency.

We had a similar issue on windows 10 where most .Net based services would fail on startup, but could be started later manually just fine. For some reason, services that are written in .NET take longer to start in Windows 10, but this fix works on any version of Windows, including Windows 7. By default, if a service takes longer than 30 seconds to start without responding, the service is terminated by Windows.

I was able to change that behavior to 60 seconds in the registry. Go to:

If it doesn’t already exist, create a DWORD (32-bit) key called «ServicesPipeTimeout»(minus quotes). Set its value to 60000(in decimal). This correlates to 60 seconds in milliseconds.

I even created a regfile to automate this:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

Just paste into notepad and save as a .reg file.

This is not a delayed start, but an increase in the time given to services to respond after startup. This fixed the issue for us on multiple machines. Unfortunately, I still do not know why .NET services take so long to start that they get terminated. However, I feel this is a Microsoft bug, and not necessarily anything us users are doing wrong.

windows service startup timeout

Is there a way to set a different value for service startup timeout per service? I can change it using the ServicesPipeTimeout registry key, but it’s per machine (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824344).

At the moment the only thing I thought about was to do all the time-consuming startup actions in a different thread.

4 Answers 4

It’s good practice to finish starting your service as fast as possible. So, during the start state, do only what you absolutely need to acknowledge it started successfully; and do the rest later. If the start is still a lengthy process, use SetServiceStatus periodically to inform the Service Control Manager that you have not yet finished, so it does not time-out your service.

I agree with Romulo on finishing to start your service as soon as possible. However, if you need the time and you are using .NET Framework 2.0 or later, you might consider ServiceBase.RequestAdditionalTime() method.

Simply do timeintensive stuff in another thread

I also had to deal with a service which may takes a few seconds/minutes to have a good Start. When the service starts, it tries to connect to a SQL Server. However, when the whole server was restarted , my service was starting BEFORE SQL Server. (I know about the Service dependency but it dont apply to my situation for a particular reason. ). I tried to do a loop trying 10 times to connect to SQL Server, but Windows was killing my service before the 2nd try, because of the Timeout.

My solution : I added a Timer in the «onStart()» of my service. Then, the «onTick()» method of the service was trying 10 times to connect to the SQL Server (with a waiting of 30 in it). No more Timeout at startup.

• My service starts in 5 seconds.
• A timer is launched 10 seconds after the service is started.
• The timer tries 10 times [waiting 30 seconds each time] to connect to the SQL Server.
• If it succeed, the timer will disable itself, if not (after 10 try), I stop the service.

Note the more elegant way to resolve the problem but maybe some part of my solution may help anybody in the same situation than me,