Installing windows service fails: service already exists - c#

I'm trying to reinstall a service I've written using C#.
The first time this worked. I used installutil to handle the install and the service showed up in the list of services and I could start it.
Then I made some updates to the code and uninstalled the service. After figuring out I had to close the services window, the service seemed to have disappeared (i.e. successfully uninstalled).
However, upon trying to install the service again I got the message saying:
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The specified service already exists
This seemed strange as I couldn't see it in the services window. I finally thought I found the problem after deleting a registry key regarding my service, but unfortunately this didn't solve anything.
Also, uninstalling again doesn't do much to solve the problem as this results in the contradictory message:
System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The specified service does not exist as an installed service
What should I believe? Does or doesn't the service exists? I feel like a physicist trying to figure out whether the cat is dead or alive. I hope someone here knows something to help solve this problem.

A related SO-answer finally pointed me in the right direction (why I didn't find that in Google or SO's own search I don't know).
Anyway, apparently the Designer.cs generated by Visual Studio also creates a process- and service-installer. Which of course install services with the same name as my manually created installers.
Removing my own installers solved the problem.

Actual issue is that you have added the object of serviceProcessInstaller & serviceInstaller multiple times in your code ..
It should only be added once..
Open the designer.cs file of projectinstaller you will see it is already added there...

I was also getting the same error, so to resolve, what I did was:
Open the ProjectInstaller.cs from solution Explorer
Go into view designer mode by right clicking, if code view is there
You will see a new installer apart from defaults 2, i.e. serviceprocessInstaller1 and ServiceInstaller1.
Just remove that installer which was automatically generated. Now build and install, it will work.

Check the Service Name Property in Service Installer.

I have tried all solution mentioned above. But my service was installed with some different name in registry. So just try to delete that registry.
Open below link in registry
Hkey_Local_Macine>System>CurrentControlSet>Service>
But I didnt find my service under this path. So I tried to find it out in registry. Just press ctrl + F and give the name of your service. or some guess name. You will get the exact location.
Just delete it. It will work.

Need to remove "Me.Installers.AddRange(New System.Configuration.Install.Installer() {Me.ServiceInstaller1, Me.ServiceProcessInstaller1})" line if same line is there already in designer, then it will get installed.
ServiceProcessInstaller1 is name in my project.

Related

Build error after upgrade Azure SDK from 2.4 to 2.6

I just upgraded my web role project (and solution) from Azure SDK 2.4 to Azure SDK 2.6 using the upgrade functionality under project properties > application.
When I am building my application, everything works well but when I try to run it (and start up the Azure emulator and such) it gives the following error when I click "NO" if I want to proceeed with build errors:
unable to get setting value Parameter name: profileName
See build output:
Nothing more. When I open my output I can not find anything related to this. It looks like the build is done successfully.
If I click "YES" VS serves a popup with this message:
Failed to debug the Microsoft Azure Cloud Service project. The output
directory "D:\path\to\folder\src\project\csx\O" does not exist.
Maybe it has something to do with the emulator?
Can some one help? Much appreciated!
We also encountered this issue.
It appears that even if the Service Configuration you've selected in the Run/Debug settings is say, Dev.Local - you need to have a service configuration called ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg or you'll encounter this precise error.
At any case, once we created a cscfg called ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg this problem ceased, even though we were not referencing it.
It's something nasty about diagnostics which the 2.7 upgrade (in my case) attaches everywhere. Remove diagnostics from your roles (web.config, role definitions) and I bet you'll have some luck.
Update: we never got to the bottom of this. Unless you are happy without diagnostics, life really is simpler if you just give in and make sure you have a Foo.Local.cscfg!
This seems to be a catch-all error. I've just encountered it, and the root cause in my case appears to be that I had the thumbprintAlgorithm for a certificate incorrectly set. I found this out when I tried to Package... it and got a useful error message, so that's one thing to try.
Check if you have an XML syntax error in ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg

Unable to add a service reference - locked/read only

Whenever I go to add a service reference I get the error:
Failed to add Service Reference 'Servicereference1.reference'
Error: Unable to check out the current file. The file may be read-only or locked, or you may need to check the file out manually.
I already had a service reference in the project, but it broke somehow and gave me an error that stated:
Could not find default endpoint element that references contract (servicename)
The endpoints in both the web.config and the service reference config were the same (localhost)
I also could not update that reference as I would get the same 'unable to check out current file' error.
EDIT: The problem isn't native to just this project. I tried to make a new, totally separate project, and add a service reference to that and I got the same error.
I had the same error - what I found, was that there are problems if you have source control plugin "Microsoft Git provider" selected (my WCF solution was not added to source control!) and you try to add service reference.
set source control plugin to None
go to TOOLS > Options > Source Control.
add service reference
set the source control plugin to the original value
I know this has been answered, but before trying everything else in the answers, restart visual studio.
This just happened to me and 4 other people in my WCF class. Seems to be a problem with visual studio 2013 and not 2012.
As you have already cleared there is no source control involved(which seems to be cause of problem to me), you can try these steps:
Make sure if you copy paste from location where there was source control then remove source control specific files.
Make sure folder is not locked & also is not read-only. If it is so, then remove read-only from the folder.
Make sure visual studio is not in debugging mode while adding reference.
If above not works, close visual studio & restart it.
Make sure Visual Studio is started as "Run as Administrator".
Finally if all above doesn't work try restart machine.
Let me know if it works or not.
Maybe it's a bit late, but if someone has the same problem, I solved it running VS2013 as administrator.
Go to Debug menu and click on (Options and Settings)
Select Source Control.
Under Current Source ControlPlug-in drop down select none
Then click ok to save chnages,Now you can add service reference.
Oddly enough I was experiencing this in VS 2019, using git source control. I was able to resolve this by simply cleaning and rebuilding the project containing the service reference...
EDIT: If you already have a service reference that you're attempting to update you might have to delete it and add it again
Looks like some Visual studio file has gone corrupted. Try deleteing the reference completely then generate the reference using svcutil {http://{service}/metadataEndpoint} ( I assume it is WCF) or (use wsdl.exe for webservices), then get the client proxy and put it in the project to use it. See if that works fine.
Shutting down your default source control to add reference is horrible. #ScottG said above, and does work.. just start VS as administrator - that works, and you dont have to mess with your environment. VS 2013 UP-5 still has this issue.
Check if your files are read only, if yes remove the read only attribute and restart the visual studio and try to add service reference.
it worked for me like this.
Make sure, your folder in IIS where your services put (I mean the physical file; .svc) is not open or even selected in file manager. It's work for me, but before I almost went mad to find error.
My issue was related to source control but I found an easy work-around. Open the App.config file and make any change and save it. This unlocked the file and allowed me to add the service reference.
ok, I am last here and spend 1 day to search the solution , nothing was wrong in my code and I tried multiple times restart machine , close reopen visual studio but nothing worked .In my case there were some update in visual studio 2019 and that was causing the issue. After installing the update I was able to update the service reference. Hope this will be helpful for some one .

"An error occurred while signing: Key not valid for use in specified state" when compiling Outlook 2010 add-in

I'm building an Outlook 2010 add-in that will tie into our ticketing system using the ticket systems' API. A week ago I was able to compile and get context/ribbon menus which executed their functions properly. This morning I added some functions to encrypt and decrypt the API key, but now when I try to compile I get
"Error 1 An error occurred while signing: Key not valid for use in specified state."
There is no line number or file associated with the error. At first I thought it was something with the System.Security class I had included, but commenting out everything associated with that and removing the reference to System.Security did not fix the problem.
I have tried restarting everything and doing a clean build with no luck. On the advise of this forum post I have tried deleting both my machine and local RSA files but that made no difference. I have also tried deleting the _TemporaryKey.pfx file in my solution in the hopes that if that were having issues that VS would recreate a new working one, but that didn't even change the error message to tell me the file was missing.
After all this I tried opening a different add-in project that I hadn't modified for about a week and it too had the same error. I'm not sure at this point if it is a problem with Visual Studio or my computer but a brand new Outlook add-in project will compile successfully so it is only affecting old projects.
Creating a new test certificate seems to have solved the problem. This blog post pointed me in the right direction.
Open the properties page for the project that is giving the error.
Click the Signing tab.
Click Create Test Certificate.
Enter a password and click OK.
This got things working again for me.
I just encountered this same error after I had reloaded my machine. As Nick mentions, you can create a new cert and go from there.
What I ended up doing instead was adding the original certificate back into my certificate store so that it could be used again during the Visual Studio publish process. Double clicking on the PFX file and following the prompts should get you there.
One thing to note is that if enough time has gone by the certificate might expire and it would be best to create a new one.

Deleting a service

I created an installer and custom actions for a service.
On first install I managed to install the service , but when I tried running the service I got
an Error :Windows installer service cant start Error 193:0xc2
I have tried deleting this service in myriad of ways, yet on install I am still getting an error message 1001 The specified service already exists.
I deleted the service directly from the registry , but this does not seem to have worked.
I have tried
sc delete [service] --> The specified service does not exist as an installed service.
The service is not showing up in the registry nor is it present in installed services.
Any other thoughts or options would be appreciated
I have used this commands in a bat file that runs every time reinstalling. Try this and see.
set path=%path%;%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\vXXX
InstallUtil /u YourService.exe
InstallUtil /i YourService.exe
net start "Service name"
If you want to delete/uninstall/remove a Windows service, perhaps left from an incomplete installer, you can use the sc command from an Administrator control prompt:
sc delete [servicename]
"sc delete" Deletes a service subkey from the registry. If the service is running or if another process has an open handle to the service, then the service is marked for deletion.
EDIT
I have tried sc delete [service] The specified service does not exist
as an installed service.
Probably restarting the machine would fix this.
sc.exe stop serviceName
sc.exe delete serviceName
and reboot the your VM\PC
This complaint may be coming from the installer, not from Windows.
I had this same issue earlier this year, I installed a service from an MSI file, which fouled up somewhere along the line. I uninstalled the package and tried reinstalling through the installer and got the same message as you did, that the service already existed. Frustrating. It didn't show up as an installed package at all anymore, nor did it show up in the service list.
It ended up that the MSI file did not clean up after itself properly during uninstall, but that I could manually manipulate this database and remove the information myself using MSIZap.exe. You need the Windows SDK to get at this program. There may be other ways, but I don't know of them.
You will need the package guid of your installation package to remove it using MSIZap. In the same directory as MsiZap.exe, you will find another application, MsiDb.exe. Run that, point it at your MSI file, point it to some empty directory to store some exports select the "Property" table, select the "Export" radio button and hit the "OK" button. Open the "Property.idk" file that was generated by MsiDb.exe in any text editor. Look in your text for a line that says "ProductCode". The GUID that follows is what you will feed into MsiZap, brackets and all. Now you will simply (bwahaha... yeah right) enter:
msizap T {product code}
Where "{product code}" is replaced by the GUID you found. This removes all traces of your product from the MSI database in windows, which should shut the installer up.
I realize that all of this is a ridiculous pain in the butt. I don't understand why finding a product code is such a trial. But, I suppose if the uninstaller worked, you wouldn't have to do its job for it now. There really might be a simpler way to do all of this, but I haven't found one. Once I found something that worked, I was over it.
As a final note, what caused this error for me was leaving the services list open during uninstall. An uninstaller which isn't paying attention could ignore some exceptions and leave pieces of itself lying about. I was lucky, the poorly behaving uninstaller was my own. And by the way, to appreciate just how much garbage is left over from uninstallation, check out this article.
I'm not sure if I had the same problem that you had, but if so, I hope this helps. If you need clarification, ask and I'll update the answer. If I'm up a tree and this has nothing to do with your problem, I apologize.
Try with Powershell and Wmi:
(gwmi win32_service -filter "name='yourservicename'").delete()
Make sure services.msc window is closed. Sometime that messes up the service deletion. I am not sure if this will help, you should not have touched the registry!
Perhaps you tried to delete the service while it's running? In that case you might need to reboot to clear things up.

Installed Win Service not displaying in Service Manager

I have a Windows Service created in c#.
It's relatively simple compared to some of the other ones that I've worked on.
I built a setup project to install it for some testing.
I added the primary output from the service project and all the dependencies were added correctly.
I went to View > Custom Actions and added my Primary output to Install, Commit, Rollback, and Uninstall.
The project built and I right clicked the project and clicked Install.
The installation came back successful, I can view the service on the control panel under Add/Remove programs, but when I go into the Service Manager... nothing...
Can anyone provide some insite or anything else that may cause a successfuly installed service to NOT display on the Service Manager.
Forgive me if this goes without saying, but you haven't mentioned what code you are executing in your custom actions. Your service assembly must have a class which derives from System.Configuration.Install.Installer, and that class must have the [RunInstaller(true)] attribute on it. Within that class, you will need to create an instance of System.ServiceProcess.ServiceInstaller and System.ServiceProcess.ServiceProcessInstaller, set the appropriate parameters on those instances, and add them to the Installers collection. The ServiceInstaller and ServiceProcessInstaller MSDN pages have a very basic example, but it should be enough to get you there if this is what is needed.
Make sure you had provided some value in "Display name" property.
Use the following command "sc query <service_name>" from command prompt to see whether your windows service got properly installed. If you are not sure on the service name use the following command "sc query state= all >c:\ServicesList.txt" after executing this command search the ServicesList.txt in your C:\ drive.
If that too doesn't work try looking for the service name in registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
You said you added your primary output to Install, etc. But did you create an Installer derived class to do the actual installing of the windows service? I'm not talking the setup project itself, but in your project there should be an installer class that actually does the service install for you.
I had a post on my blog about creating a framework for easy installable services, it has examples on creating the isntaler class.
http://blackrabbitcoder.net/archive/2010/10/07/c-windows-services-2-of-2-self-installing-windows-service-template.aspx
In my case, solution of the problem was simple, i forgot to add access modifier 'Public' to the class. After adding access modifier, service is visible now in services list.

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