Creating Windows service without Visual Studio

Question

So creating a Windows service using Visual Studio is fairly trivial. My question goes a bit deeper as to what actually makes an executable installable as a service & how to

Answer 1

Basically there are some registry settings you have to set as well as some interfaces to implement.

Check out this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms685141.aspx

You are interested in the SCM (Service Control Manager).