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

Based on the other answers I constructed the following code to check for Windows Service status:

public void checkService() {
  String serviceName = "myService";  

  try {
    Process process = new ProcessBuilder("C:\\Windows\\System32\\sc.exe", "query" , serviceName ).start();
    InputStream is = process.getInputStream();
    InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);

    String line;
    String scOutput = "";

    // Append the buffer lines into one string
    while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
        scOutput +=  line + "\n" ;
    }

    if (scOutput.contains("STATE")) {
        if (scOutput.contains("RUNNING")) {
            System.out.println("Service running");
        } else {
            System.out.println("Service stopped");
        }       
    } else {
        System.out.println("Unknown service");
    }
  } catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
  } 
}

Answer 2

Here's a straignt C# / P/Invoke solution.

        /// <summary>
    /// Returns true if the specified service is running, or false if it is not present or not running.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="serviceName">Name of the service to check.</param>
    /// <returns>Returns true if the specified service is running, or false if it is not present or not running.</returns>
    static bool IsServiceRunning(string serviceName)
    {
        bool rVal = false;
        try
        {
            IntPtr smHandle = NativeMethods.OpenSCManager(null, null, NativeMethods.ServiceAccess.ENUMERATE_SERVICE);
            if (smHandle != IntPtr.Zero)
            {
                IntPtr svHandle = NativeMethods.OpenService(smHandle, serviceName, NativeMethods.ServiceAccess.ENUMERATE_SERVICE);
                if (svHandle != IntPtr.Zero)
                {
                    NativeMethods.SERVICE_STATUS servStat = new NativeMethods.SERVICE_STATUS();
                    if (NativeMethods.QueryServiceStatus(svHandle, servStat))
                    {
                        rVal = servStat.dwCurrentState == NativeMethods.ServiceState.Running;
                    }
                    NativeMethods.CloseServiceHandle(svHandle);
                }
                NativeMethods.CloseServiceHandle(smHandle);
            }
        }
        catch (System.Exception )
        {

        }
        return rVal;
    }

public static class NativeMethods
{
    [DllImport("AdvApi32")]
    public static extern IntPtr OpenSCManager(string machineName, string databaseName, ServiceAccess access);
    [DllImport("AdvApi32")]
    public static extern IntPtr OpenService(IntPtr serviceManagerHandle, string serviceName, ServiceAccess access);
    [DllImport("AdvApi32")]
    public static extern bool CloseServiceHandle(IntPtr serviceHandle);
    [DllImport("AdvApi32")]
    public static extern bool QueryServiceStatus(IntPtr serviceHandle, [Out] SERVICE_STATUS status);

    [Flags]
    public enum ServiceAccess : uint
    {
        ALL_ACCESS = 0xF003F,
        CREATE_SERVICE = 0x2,
        CONNECT = 0x1,
        ENUMERATE_SERVICE = 0x4,
        LOCK = 0x8,
        MODIFY_BOOT_CONFIG = 0x20,
        QUERY_LOCK_STATUS = 0x10,
        GENERIC_READ = 0x80000000,
        GENERIC_WRITE = 0x40000000,
        GENERIC_EXECUTE = 0x20000000,
        GENERIC_ALL = 0x10000000
    }

    public enum ServiceState
    {
        Stopped = 1,
        StopPending = 3,
        StartPending = 2,
        Running = 4,
        Paused = 7,
        PausePending =6,
        ContinuePending=5
    }

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack = 1)]
    public class SERVICE_STATUS
    {
        public int dwServiceType;
        public ServiceState dwCurrentState;
        public int dwControlsAccepted;
        public int dwWin32ExitCode;
        public int dwServiceSpecificExitCode;
        public int dwCheckPoint;
        public int dwWaitHint;
    };
}

Answer 3

here's what I had to do. It's ugly, but it works beautifully.

String STATE_PREFIX = "STATE              : ";

String s = runProcess("sc query \""+serviceName+"\"");
// check that the temp string contains the status prefix
int ix = s.indexOf(STATE_PREFIX);
if (ix >= 0) {
  // compare status number to one of the states
  String stateStr = s.substring(ix+STATE_PREFIX.length(), ix+STATE_PREFIX.length() + 1);
  int state = Integer.parseInt(stateStr);
  switch(state) {
    case (1): // service stopped
      break;
    case (4): // service started
      break;
   }
}

runProcess is a private method that runs the given string as a command line process and returns the resulting output. As I said, ugly, but works. Hope this helps.