Need a way to check status of Windows service programmatically

Question

Here is the situation:

I have been called upon to work with InstallAnywhere 8, a Java-based installer IDE, of sorts, that allows starting and stopping of windows ser

Answer 1

You can create a small VBS on-th-fly, launch it and capture its return code.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;

public class VBSUtils {
  private VBSUtils() {  }

  public static boolean isServiceRunning(String serviceName) {
    try {
        File file = File.createTempFile("realhowto",".vbs");
        file.deleteOnExit();
        FileWriter fw = new java.io.FileWriter(file);

        String vbs = "Set sh = CreateObject(\"Shell.Application\") \n"
                   + "If sh.IsServiceRunning(\""+ serviceName +"\") Then \n"
                   + "   wscript.Quit(1) \n"
                   + "End If \n"
                   + "wscript.Quit(0) \n";
        fw.write(vbs);
        fw.close();
        Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("wscript " + file.getPath());
        p.waitFor();
        return (p.exitValue() == 1);
    }
    catch(Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return false;
  }


  public static void main(String[] args){
    //
    // DEMO
    //
    String result = "";
    msgBox("Check if service 'Themes' is running (should be yes)");
    result = isServiceRunning("Themes") ? "" : " NOT ";
    msgBox("service 'Themes' is " + result + " running ");

    msgBox("Check if service 'foo' is running (should be no)");
    result = isServiceRunning("foo") ? "" : " NOT ";
    msgBox("service 'foo' is " + result + " running ");
  }

  public static void msgBox(String msg) {
    javax.swing.JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog((java.awt.Component)
       null, msg, "VBSUtils", javax.swing.JOptionPane.DEFAULT_OPTION);
  }
}