I don't know if you'll ever read this, I started learning C# about 2 weeks ago. I needed a new hobby for the quarantine and I figured that this one will do. You're honestly one of the most gifted people in passive knowledge I've ever encountered in my life, thank you for all the work you're putting in for us common people to learn. I can only wish you to never stop doing this for as long as you're enjoying this. Thank you very much.
I'm a junior c# full stack developer and I have to say Sir , you are a great help, not only make it easy to understand with step by step tutorial and also with a very clear and easy understand explanation. Thank you.
Thanks Tim, this is exactly what I needed. My buddy at work needed something to scan a directory for files, process the file data and generate an xml document for each file. It allows 2 systems to communicate that otherwise couldn’t, saving a project. Scheduled a Teams meeting to get the details of what he needed… 10 mins in I pulled up this video and 45 mins later we had it working! It was my first service too. Your content has made me a lot of money over the years! 150% increase in pay over the last 5 years at a large multinational company, the biggest contributing factor being the ability rapidly to solve little issues like this. It even got me an opportunities to go to Microsoft’s executive briefing center in Redmond. Never would have thought I would have the opportunities 5 years ago. I’ve had the all access pass to your paid content for a few years now and it’s worth every penny. The new Blazor course is great. I turned another buddy at work on to your content and he purchased a course too. Keep up the great work Tim!
I have many applications that I can be called upon to support. I was looking through them and found Topshelf. I put it into TH-cam and my favorite TH-camr came up, you. I am the one that was in shock to see you at KCDC, thank you for coming. This is an old video, but it is still relevent. :)
WOW! I've been avoiding using services for over 10 years cause of the messiness of troubleshooting while developing. Today while watching your video, I learned how to, and proceeded to convert a simple console application to a service. Thanks a million!
Hi, I've been using services a lot, but they allways come with console sibling. My pattern was very simplistic. Entire job was done in class library and service in start/stop methods only called start/stop methods in class library. The same job is doing console application. Debuging was easy, just debug console application. And for fun, sometimes forget to reference some library in service application :)
What an absolutely SUPERB video - so well explained and I wrote a Windows Service in less than 3 minutes after watching this start to finish. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you!
Wow, I'd heard about TopShelf, but never really looked into it, this makes debugging services so much easier - and looks easy to convert existing services to use Topshelf - Thanks Tim!
I made a small service to routinely clean up my downloads folder like you suggested. Works great! You are inspiring me to "play with" C# more than I did in the past with all these great tutorials!
Thanks Tim! This couldn't have come at a better time. I just started to write a service on Friday and now I'm going to do it this way. Love your videos; they are so easy to understand.
Interesting question. What are you thinking about? It would seem like if you could pass parameters in, you could do the same without needing to pass them in (maybe app.config settings) since you wouldn't be getting user interaction.
Working on a "listener" for a GPS hardware that will transmit information to my server which will store the data in an Azure Cosmo DB, so basically it will be great to pass for example, a specific port to use, max concurrent connections from a certain GPS or even "query" the service for uptime, current connected devices and stuff like that.
Yeah, I think updating the app.config or even a local database might be the solution here. As for querying it, you could actually just store that info in a local database (updated in real-time) and then read the database from anywhere you need that info.
Definitely deserves a like. However, I recently had to implement a service for work and I got the 1053 error when I started it. What it said was "The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion" Instead of writing the following start method as mentioned in your video public void start() { //instantiate a bunch of objects and running through the constructors } I use start to call async codes as the following public void start() { _callStartTasksAsync(); } private async Task _callStartTasksAsync() { await Task.Run(()=>{ //instantiate a bunch of objects and running through the constructors } ) } This allowed the service to get through the start method ASAP and avoided the error
Messing around with NSSM utility to run existing applications as a service, I decided to look for way to write my own service from scratch for more flexibility and to come up with a rock-solid approach that also allows easy debugging and testing. Found your "Windows Services in C#" tutorial -> bullseye! Thanks for your great work.
This video “inspired me” to actually implement the “download folder keeper” as a service, and I’m almost done, if any one is interested I will be uploading probably tomorrow the source code to github, I used what Tim tough in a video about directories but I also implemented a way to find the “default” download folder for your computer. Also used the “app.conf” as Tim also did as a challenge a few weeks ago. Thanks once again Tim... you had built a great community to share knowledge and learn!
Okay guys... the project is up, all you have to do is download, compile and install. So far the thing is working for me! github.com/acidrod/DownloadsKeeper
Tim - thanks - I just finished your c# mastercourse (which was great!) and am embarking on my own projects to build a portfolio. I have a desktop scanner and a printer, and I'm going to create a service that watches the folder for newly scanned pdfs and then prints them - essentially a photocopier. Thanks to your helpful videos, I think I can pull this off.
The best lecture ever. I was Wondering on how to sync SQLite database files to the main server and I thought of checking how services work and here you explained it so clearly Thank you
cheers for this , i was trying to create a service using the windows service which wasnt pleasent, from this video ive adopted topshelf and its worked a treat. i now have managed to create a service that checks for USB sticks being inserted, and if usb has a serial that matches our data base it will check to see if ir requires a update,and if it does it then updates it accordingly. Great video Tim keep up the good work
Many Thanks Tim, I used to apply a do-while-loop to let a program keep running. I heard about the services as a best practice in such a circumstances but it looked a little scary to me. Thanks you again for make it so simple and understandable.
more than 15 years since my last visual basic class as a teacher and here I am learning a lot in a half hour video. I'm not that old but felt like 80y old easy. Very good tip, love the intros and explanations (I want to understand, not just copynpaste). sometimes its a bit too fast for someone that dont open a dev env since delphi 6 like me, those ctrl + ( . ) and tab autofill put me crazy sometimes, but nothing that a stop and 5 sec rewind dont solve. thanks! (sorry for my poor eng).
Thank you so much tim. This is an amazing video. Excellent explanation. I am going to write a service that clears my temp folder periodically so that it doesn't slow my system.
Hi I've a question, you can run ANY program (.exe) as service as long as you execute "serviceName.exe install start" in the command prompt? or what are the requirements for this command to accept a .exe file as service
No, a service needs to operate without need to interact with the user interface, it should run continually, and it should have methods to properly start and stop it that are based upon the common interface so that the system can properly tell it what to do.
Hi Tim! Excellent video as always! My best tip to debug an ordinary win service project is use of #if debug in program.cs and call to same "start method". It works perfectly for me :)
I'm pretty sure that you've listened this many times. You rock bro! His video helped to me so much, can you make a video talking about the services recovery options?
Very helpful. I always have trouble with brown outs in my area and I have a plex server running in my basement. If I am out of town, the server would restart but the plex software would not. I created a service called to launch plex when the server rebooted automatically. Works perfect.
i have applyed the same of your code but i could not see the service inside services.msc but i can see it the task manager in the tab of services what is the issue ??
Hi Tim! Thanks for the video. I am new at windows services. I want to ask is it possible to detect sql server changes in windows service? I was able to accomplish the task in MVC using SingalR but what can i do to achieve the same in windows service? P.s i want to detect the database change and kill/start a process
Thank you Tim. I did watch few different videos on this same topic. But this was simply the best. You explained the concept, the tools and the process so clearly and effectively. The idea of creating a console app instead of using the service project is brilliant. It saves so much time in debugging when we do a complicated service. Thanks mate. Much appreciated. BTW, it would be great if you could do a follow up video on using Squirrel with this project.
Wooouu!! Tim u are the man! I am really happy to know to do this, I could do it on my own compu, its awesome !!! how easy you explain it, ! tons of gratitude. my first services!
Hey Tim, can you add a service base/use ServiceController to send integers that can be read by a Windows Forms app through this? Basically is there a way to use the "OnCustomCommand" function in this kind of service implementation? Thanks a lot!
Thank you for this wonderful video. I was running into some serious roadblocks in rewriting a windows service at my current workplace due to the Microsoft project template making it difficult to debug initialization steps. Also, I totally agree with the text logging being an issue on long running windows services, since the person who wrote the old one was using text logging and it was blowing up the system despite changing to a new text file daily.
Thanks Tim! Finally I can abandon my holy trio consisting of Windows service for production, console application for debuging and class library handling all the fun. Service and console app were very simplistic. Just start and stop Task provided by class library.
Thank you very much! I am learning C# and i wanted to create a service for deleting a regedit folder if exists, i didn't know the language used on Windows services was c#. So this makes me learn it even more :D
Question. Is this an elegant solution to use in a RESTful API, let's say, performing 1h DB polling in a certain GET route? I'm currently in need of using some kind of polling. I was considering using a threading timer which would eventually block-off the app from continuing or probably introducing some side-effects.
Thanks for another great video tim! I'm using trying to use a service to listen on a socket server from a large number of client connections. The goal is to be able to run a scheduler on these clients and take their payload to store it in a central database.
Hi @IAmTimCorey, I am having a problem I followed your guide and everything is working but the service when I start it over time the RAM consumption gets really high, do you know how can I fix this?
It sounds like you have a memory leak in your application. Maybe you are opening a resource and failing to properly close it. Maybe you are creating variables that are not properly scoped, so they stay in memory forever. There could be quite a few reasons for this, but these are the big ones to try to track down.
Hi Tim. Thank you so much for the video. I'm actually developing a Windows Service for my WPF app. I'm thinking of using your method. I have a question though. Is there a way to install this application when the user installed the WPF (I created the Installer for WPF app using NSIS script)? Also, do the users need to have .NET in their machines?
I'm not familiar with NSIS scripts, but yes, you can install a service when you install your WPF app. If you are using .NET Framework, the user has to have that version of the .NET Framework installed on their machines (it comes with Windows, so it usually isn't a problem). For .NET projects (.NET 5+), you can include .NET as part of the application so that you don't need to install anything on the user's machine. That also means your app will always have the correct version of .NET that it needs.
@@IAmTimCorey Thanks for your prompt reply. When you say include .NET as part of the application, you mean publishing it using self-container command? The issue I am encountering is the WPF app is already more than 170,000 KB. If I publish this console app with the same technique, it would add about 60-70,000KB to the whole thing. Do you know if there is any way to work around this? The purpose is to receive notifications from AWS SNS in the background when WPF app is not running.
You can publish with the trimmed option, which will reduce the .NET code to only what your application needs. It can be tricky to get right if you use reflection, but otherwise it should be able to reduce the overall installation size of .NET (not your application code, though). With a 170MB application, though, it sounds like you have some room for shrinking the app itself. If a significant portion of the app is images, compress them and reduce their size. That will probably be enough of a savings (if you aren't doing it already) to make up for the space required by the .NET packages. At the end of the day, though, a 300MB application isn't really that big of a deal in most cases.
OnException is not an exception handler. It just allows you to log the exception or do other things to it. You need to still catch the exception properly.
Thank you for this great video. My goal from what I learned from your video is that I need to do check specific equipment on my network to make sure they are running and provide updates on the status of the equipment say for example every 10 minutes I would like my service to check the equipment every 10 minutes by doing a ping test to see if there is a return if there is no return the change the status code to indicate this. The information will update a database table as changes occur. I figured having running a Windows service is better than using a task manager to perform the job.
Thanks again Tim! I was thinking about saving the day to day wallpaper-pictures coming from bing somewhere to keep them (sometimes very nice pics) , This will be the way ! So many good things coming from you ! Best Regards !
good night teacher. Is it possible to start in foreground or close a program through services? when run in console the program works fine. when I turn it into a service it doesn't run correctly. my program monitors quinto one thought and started in windows. it monitors screen downtime. if it reaches the ingot time, it closes the program
Great video, nice introduction to a topic I knew absolutely nothing about. I'd love to see a video on using Github within Microsoft Visual Studio for a simple project. The older one is good but think one using the actual baked-in functionality would be very helpful.
hi! need some help. I can not run service with database. If I run it from debug folder with exe file - no problems. But when I start it as service, I get error: "Login failed for user". How to solve this?
You are probably using the Trusted credentials for your connection string. When you run it as a service, it is running under a different login, which doesn't have access rights to your database. Change which user the service runs under or give the user it runs under permissions to your SQL Server. Or, you can change to a username and password in your connection string instead of Trusted.
@13min approx: I am confused...! Your function TimerElapsed() returns void. Yet you set the property 'Elapsed' of the member variable _timer to equal itself plus the return value of TimerElapsed(), which is void. So we're adding void to something...? I see that 'Elapsed' is an "ElapsedEventHandler", so I get that we're not dealing with regular variables here. Please can you explain the wacky syntax here.
This is an event (Elapsed) and an event listener (TimerElapsed). To see a more detailed explanation, this video will help: th-cam.com/video/-1cftB9q1kQ/w-d-xo.html
Hi ,Tim. I created Service which starts a Windows Form application ( Process.Start(@"C:\Users.....batteryLevel.txt") When i test it in Visual Studio it works perfectly so batteryLevel.txt opens both in Task Manager and Desktop but when i install it as service , batteryLevel.txt shows only in Task Manager not in Desktop, Can you Help me please?
Services do not operate with a user interface. They don't interact with the logged in user. They typically are logged in under a service account. While technically it opened the file, it opened it on its own account. If you changed the account that the service logs in as to be your account, you might be able to get it to work but it would be clunky (it would only work under your account and only while it is open). You aren't supposed to do that directly. If you want to interact with the logged in user like this, try running a scheduled task instead of a service.
Thanks for the video.. but can I ask, how to brows a file in a service... I'm a student and working on project... I have to create a windows service to load data from csv to SQL server... I have already done the part need to enter data to SQL server... but I couldn't make the part where user have brows the file needed. Thank you.
A service doesn’t have a user interface, so the user cannot browse for a file. However, if you mean that the service looks for a file on its own, that can be done. I have a video on text files on this channel that should show you the code.
it's been a while i didn't stop here :) Happy i did today! Thanks, usefull stuf (veeeerry usefull) well explained as usual! I like that format you have for a while, quick snipet from A to Z with amazing (basic) ideas :) Thanks
Tim i have a app, is a automation, run in chrome, when i run in visual studio works perfectly , but when i install a service , my app never is called and don't run, you have me a opnion to solve this ? i need a service calling my app in a time space, for me not have to do this manually. sorry for my bad english!
Services run outside of the logged in user's profile so they can run when no one is logged on. It sounds like your app might need to run with your profile and interact with your information. Maybe try changing the permissions it runs under or change it from a service to an exe that runs in the background.
Hi Tim, i need to build an app for listen when a txt file drop into a folder, read it and write the info into a SQL database. Is this the best choice or what do you recommend me? Thanks!
Hello, I love your tutorials I want to thank you for those! It was very interesting! So I can build my own Windows Service project or install the service automatically. Thank you for explaining what everything does.
Hi Tim, i had a question, is it possible to have perform 2 or more activity using the single service, say i want to clear my download folder, sending weekly/Monthly/Daily reminders to customer/Teams(based on preferences) etc to say a few. Basically i want to do multiple activities in a single service.is it possible ? if yes how can it be done. awating for your response :)
Absolutely. You can do as many processes as you want. When the timer event fires, you can call as many methods as you want. Each could do a different thing. Or, if you didn't need to run one process as often, you could either use two timers or you could use a long-running count to determine if a secondary method should be called.
@@praadeeprao2073 Along with that, if you're going to be running multiple processes within the server, and if they don't have much to do with each other, then you might want to look into using the "ASYNC / AWAIT" commands and the use of TASK too. I believe Tim might even have some videos here on these :)
great Video! I always Use Windows Service Project. When I do this, I always create a second project in the same solution with a simple GUI, to trigger the same methods as the service does, when I need to debug it. That also works pretty well, but maybe I will try this solution in the future.
I've been looking for a way to make sure my NumLock is on, my computer has it off when I turn it on or come back from the lock screen. Is that something i could do with this? I've tried all the registry and BIOS fixes i could find. I did find one but it only works at startup.
If it starts when you are testing it, that probably means you have a permissions issue (the user the service is running under does not have the access rights it needs to execute the service).
Hello Tim, How can I get the Service wake up at certain time? In Windows Services, we can get the time from App.config. But how to do it here? Also how can we add log when the AddLog value is True in App.config file?
This service can read from app.config just like any other C# application. As for waking up at a certain time, you can have a timer check the time and trigger at the specific time.
I always wanted to learn how to do that. Excelent way of teaching, could you sometime in the future do a sample of a service watching a DB for example a notification service or anithing using a database
Hi Tim, amazing video that saved my life :-). I have a question though. When I create the service that way it is being seen from task manager. Is there any way of preventig the user from closing the application or restart it after it was shut down from task manager? I need this to run constantly on the server and just to be clear I am not writing any malware I just need this application to do it's job permanently. Thank You for Your answer in advance.
No, there isn't. If you wanted to be sure it was always running, you would need to create a second service that restarted the first service if it ever shut down. Just don't do the same thing in reverse for the second service. Otherwise, you will have a problem restarting your machine and you won't be able to update your services.
Is there a way to do a debug friendly service on Framework 4.0? Topshelf doesn't seem to work for Framework 4.0. Edit: needed to grab an older version of Topshelf. 3.0.0 installed. Testing to see if it has the functionality.
An exception saying "cannot load file or assembly 'topshelf.service installer,version =4.2.1.215 or dependencies' on the line runasLocalsystem.. how do i fix this?
Have you tried the fixes here: stackoverflow.com/questions/47476023/could-not-load-file-or-assembly-topshelf Specifically, have you checked to be sure your dll is in the output folder for topshelf?
So I followed the instructions and it definitely works with the CMD service install. However I noticed windows has some issues if you install the service with powershell and throws the Error 1053: The Service did not Respond to the Start or Control Request in a Timely Fashion. Is there a difference between how powershell handles service installs than CMD? Im ignorant to these things :)
It sounds like the PowerShell window is running under different permissions than the CMD window. Check which account the service is running under. That account probably doesn't have the necessary permissions.
So Tim if I was to create an MVC application off our Tournament Tracker app from a previous app I should be able to access the data resources from that app. As long as this is setup as a separate project. Am I correct or not. The only thing that is common is the database content.
You can add a new MVC project to the solution and make that the UI, yes. That's what I do in the MVC add-on course. I keep all of the business logic and data access the same and just replace the UI.
I am using TopShelf this to create a Quart.NET Windows service that automatically picks up scheduled jobs and runs them. For the service to automatically pick up jobs, do I need to call the scheduler.Start() repeatedly inside a while loop in the Start() method? Or will calling it once when the windows service starts do the trick? So far, in the console debugging, I didn't need to put it in a while loop; was wondering if it was the same for a service as well.
Tim, another great video. I have used Task Scheduler for some similar programs that could just as well be services. Is there any advantage of one over the other?
It is a similar idea but there are a couple benefits of a service. First, they are exposed to the user more readily. Services and their status are listed in the task manager and in the Services portion of the control panel. Also, the user has access to easily choose if a service runs, when it runs, who's permissions it runs under, and more. That gives the user more control over their own system. Finally, a service can keep information between calls more easily. It could have a running counter, a list of things it has done, or anything else that might be useful across calls.
I run into error below:- "Service cannot be started. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80070520): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070520 A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070520). at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(RuntimeType objectType) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.CreateInstance(RuntimeType serverType) at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.IsCurrentContextOK(RuntimeType serverType, Object[] props, Boolean bNewObj) at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandleInternal& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck) at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipCheckThis, Boolean fillCache, StackCrawlMark& stackMark) at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceDefaul..." how can I fix this?
What if you are using a service to call something which is suspected to be a little 'memory leaky'? Is there a way to somehow recycle the process regularly to keep the server running well? I've had to resort to using scheduled tasks in the past, so that the server has chance to cool down overnight.
Wrap the call in a using statement to kill the memory leak (proper disposal). Also, if possible, identify and directly deal with the leak. In theory, you could run a scheduled job that recycled the service, but that's not ideal.
In File Explorer in the address bar you can just type "cmd" and it will open cmd to that directory. Great video by the way, still trying to think of some ideas on how to use this!
Hi Tim, Great video on Creating Windows Service in C#. One point, how to create one WITHOUT using "Topshelf"? This is restriction for me as I have to work in client's environment and can't add this toollibrary "Topshelf". Thank you very much for detailed process.
Currently have a console application that uses a while loop to check for messages using websockets and relays the message to a device over usb. I would like to use your example from the video to make my application a windows service. Seeing that it relies on a timer, can I do without the timer, or role a solution that runs the while loop every x secs?
I have an application that is deployed using ClickOnce thus having administrator rights it is not needed to install it. Can I install a service without admin rights? Is there an automatic process of installing the service in the same time my app is installed?
I do not believe so. Services run outside of the logged in user's account. So, for example, you could have your service running even when no one is logged into the computer. I believe that takes admin rights to install.
very excellent demo i have a question : i am creating a windows service and this service needs to handle a long running batches . if i set time interval as 1 min the service will be invoked every one minute and process the files . what happen if the service is already running and handling one batch in the mean while if we trigger the service (every one minute invocation)? does it going to handle the second request in separate thread or does it going to kill the second request since it is already processing batch ? can you please help me here .
Remember that the service is triggering itself. It is always running. We use a timer to trigger the next run of a method. Now in your case, it all depends on how you set things up. If it is calling an async method, yes, it could spawn multiple instances. If it is a synchronous method call, you will back up the operations. Either way, I would put something in the method call that cancels the event if a current process is running. You might actually disable the trigger while the update runs and then turn it back on afterwards. That way, you always only have one in the queue at a time.
I don't know if you'll ever read this, I started learning C# about 2 weeks ago. I needed a new hobby for the quarantine and I figured that this one will do. You're honestly one of the most gifted people in passive knowledge I've ever encountered in my life, thank you for all the work you're putting in for us common people to learn. I can only wish you to never stop doing this for as long as you're enjoying this. Thank you very much.
I am glad my content is so helpful to you. Thank you for the very kind words.
I'm a junior c# full stack developer and I have to say Sir , you are a great help, not only make it easy to understand with step by step tutorial and also with a very clear and easy understand explanation. Thank you.
You are most welcome. Thanks for watching.
if I had discovered this channel earlier, I would have saved myself a lot of headaches.
Well, I'm glad you found it eventually.
Thanks Tim, this is exactly what I needed. My buddy at work needed something to scan a directory for files, process the file data and generate an xml document for each file. It allows 2 systems to communicate that otherwise couldn’t, saving a project. Scheduled a Teams meeting to get the details of what he needed… 10 mins in I pulled up this video and 45 mins later we had it working! It was my first service too. Your content has made me a lot of money over the years! 150% increase in pay over the last 5 years at a large multinational company, the biggest contributing factor being the ability rapidly to solve little issues like this. It even got me an opportunities to go to Microsoft’s executive briefing center in Redmond. Never would have thought I would have the opportunities 5 years ago. I’ve had the all access pass to your paid content for a few years now and it’s worth every penny. The new Blazor course is great. I turned another buddy at work on to your content and he purchased a course too. Keep up the great work Tim!
Thanks for sharing! I'm glad my content has been so helpful.
I have many applications that I can be called upon to support. I was looking through them and found Topshelf. I put it into TH-cam and my favorite TH-camr came up, you. I am the one that was in shock to see you at KCDC, thank you for coming.
This is an old video, but it is still relevent. :)
I'm glad my content has been, and continues to be, so helpful. It was nice to meet you.
WOW! I've been avoiding using services for over 10 years cause of the messiness of troubleshooting while developing. Today while watching your video, I learned how to, and proceeded to convert a simple console application to a service. Thanks a million!
Awesome! I'm so glad it helped.
Hi, I've been using services a lot, but they allways come with console sibling. My pattern was very simplistic. Entire job was done in class library and service in start/stop methods only called start/stop methods in class library. The same job is doing console application. Debuging was easy, just debug console application. And for fun, sometimes forget to reference some library in service application :)
What an absolutely SUPERB video - so well explained and I wrote a Windows Service in less than 3 minutes after watching this start to finish. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you!
You are welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Wow, I'd heard about TopShelf, but never really looked into it, this makes debugging services so much easier - and looks easy to convert existing services to use Topshelf - Thanks Tim!
You are welcome. I'm glad it was so valuable to you.
I made a small service to routinely clean up my downloads folder like you suggested. Works great! You are inspiring me to "play with" C# more than I did in the past with all these great tutorials!
Awesome!
Excellent, just be careful with tasks like that, you don't want to be cleaning up your C:\ drive by mistake :)
Thanks Tim! This couldn't have come at a better time. I just started to write a service on Friday and now I'm going to do it this way. Love your videos; they are so easy to understand.
Nice! I'm glad you will be able to make use of this right away.
Have been waiting for this topic for a REALLY long time!!! thank you a LOT TIM!!! you are taking this channel to the next level... not kidding here!
Awesome! I'm glad you finally got it. You are most welcome.
Is it possible to have a service that accept parameters when windows starts?...
Interesting question. What are you thinking about? It would seem like if you could pass parameters in, you could do the same without needing to pass them in (maybe app.config settings) since you wouldn't be getting user interaction.
Working on a "listener" for a GPS hardware that will transmit information to my server which will store the data in an Azure Cosmo DB, so basically it will be great to pass for example, a specific port to use, max concurrent connections from a certain GPS or even "query" the service for uptime, current connected devices and stuff like that.
Yeah, I think updating the app.config or even a local database might be the solution here. As for querying it, you could actually just store that info in a local database (updated in real-time) and then read the database from anywhere you need that info.
Definitely deserves a like. However, I recently had to implement a service for work and I got the 1053 error when I started it. What it said was
"The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion"
Instead of writing the following start method as mentioned in your video
public void start()
{
//instantiate a bunch of objects and running through the constructors
}
I use start to call async codes as the following
public void start()
{
_callStartTasksAsync();
}
private async Task _callStartTasksAsync()
{
await Task.Run(()=>{ //instantiate a bunch of objects and running through the constructors } )
}
This allowed the service to get through the start method ASAP and avoided the error
i face the same problem
Messing around with NSSM utility to run existing applications as a service, I decided to look for way to write my own service from scratch for more flexibility and to come up with a rock-solid approach that also allows easy debugging and testing. Found your "Windows Services in C#" tutorial -> bullseye! Thanks for your great work.
I'm glad it was helpful.
This video “inspired me” to actually implement the “download folder keeper” as a service, and I’m almost done, if any one is interested I will be uploading probably tomorrow the source code to github, I used what Tim tough in a video about directories but I also implemented a way to find the “default” download folder for your computer. Also used the “app.conf” as Tim also did as a challenge a few weeks ago.
Thanks once again Tim... you had built a great community to share knowledge and learn!
I'm glad you are making use of what you learn.
Okay guys... the project is up, all you have to do is download, compile and install. So far the thing is working for me!
github.com/acidrod/DownloadsKeeper
Tim - thanks - I just finished your c# mastercourse (which was great!) and am embarking on my own projects to build a portfolio. I have a desktop scanner and a printer, and I'm going to create a service that watches the folder for newly scanned pdfs and then prints them - essentially a photocopier. Thanks to your helpful videos, I think I can pull this off.
Awesome! Great job and great idea.
Love the detail and simplicity of this video. Excellent.
Thanks!
The best lecture ever. I was Wondering on how to sync SQLite database files to the main server and I thought of checking how services work and here you explained it so clearly Thank you
Glad it was helpful!
cheers for this , i was trying to create a service using the windows service which wasnt pleasent, from this video ive adopted topshelf and its worked a treat. i now have managed to create a service that checks for USB sticks being inserted, and if usb has a serial that matches our data base it will check to see if ir requires a update,and if it does it then updates it accordingly. Great video Tim keep up the good work
Thanks!
Many Thanks Tim, I used to apply a do-while-loop to let a program keep running. I heard about the services as a best practice in such a circumstances but it looked a little scary to me. Thanks you again for make it so simple and understandable.
You are a life saver. This was exactly what I was looking for. Perfectly explained and super easy to follow.
I am glad it was so helpful.
more than 15 years since my last visual basic class as a teacher and here I am learning a lot in a half hour video. I'm not that old but felt like 80y old easy.
Very good tip, love the intros and explanations (I want to understand, not just copynpaste).
sometimes its a bit too fast for someone that dont open a dev env since delphi 6 like me, those ctrl + ( . ) and tab autofill put me crazy sometimes, but nothing that a stop and 5 sec rewind dont solve.
thanks!
(sorry for my poor eng).
I am glad it was so helpful.
Thank you so much tim. This is an amazing video. Excellent explanation.
I am going to write a service that clears my temp folder periodically so that it doesn't slow my system.
Great! I’m glad it was helpful.
Thanks Tim, I am so glad that I came across your channel!
Thanks for trusting Tim when you need help.
Hi I've a question, you can run ANY program (.exe) as service as long as you execute "serviceName.exe install start" in the command prompt? or what are the requirements for this command to accept a .exe file as service
No, a service needs to operate without need to interact with the user interface, it should run continually, and it should have methods to properly start and stop it that are based upon the common interface so that the system can properly tell it what to do.
Hi Tim! Excellent video as always! My best tip to debug an ordinary win service project is use of #if debug in program.cs and call to same "start method". It works perfectly for me :)
Yep, that works too.
Crystal clear explanation. Exactly what I was looking for!
Great!
hey man, i have no words to thank you for some such i´ve learned from your videos this year. they´re always so complete and simple to understand.
I am glad my content has been so helpful to you.
Lot of thanks to you friend. Its really helpful for everyone to easy to understand and has lot of value. Thank you again and again. Keep up good work
You are welcome.
This was very useful!! I have to digest TopShelf into my brain a bit but I really appreciate the console app setup!! Thank you.
You are welcome.
I'm pretty sure that you've listened this many times. You rock bro! His video helped to me so much, can you make a video talking about the services recovery options?
Thanks for the suggestion. Please add it to the list on the suggestion site so others can vote on it as well: suggestions.iamtimcorey.com/
Tim, Tim... You have been of immense help in my career. And this one is just Exceptional!!!
I'm glad I've been so helpful.
Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
Please help! I keep getting this
Very helpful. I always have trouble with brown outs in my area and I have a plex server running in my basement. If I am out of town, the server would restart but the plex software would not. I created a service called to launch plex when the server rebooted automatically. Works perfect.
Excellent!
i have applyed the same of your code but i could not see the service inside services.msc but i can see it the task manager in the tab of services what is the issue ??
This was a very helpful video. It truly gave me all the help I needed in getting a service stood up that runs once a day at 4 AM. Great job!
Excellent!
Hi Tim! Thanks for the video. I am new at windows services. I want to ask is it possible to detect sql server changes in windows service? I was able to accomplish the task in MVC using SingalR but what can i do to achieve the same in windows service?
P.s i want to detect the database change and kill/start a process
Yes, it is possible. You already have most of the code you need.
Thank you Tim. I did watch few different videos on this same topic. But this was simply the best. You explained the concept, the tools and the process so clearly and effectively. The idea of creating a console app instead of using the service project is brilliant. It saves so much time in debugging when we do a complicated service. Thanks mate. Much appreciated.
BTW, it would be great if you could do a follow up video on using Squirrel with this project.
Glad it was helpful! Thanks for the suggestion.
Wooouu!! Tim u are the man! I am really happy to know to do this, I could do it on my own compu, its awesome !!! how easy you explain it, ! tons of gratitude. my first services!
Awesome! Congrats on your first service!
Hey Tim, can you add a service base/use ServiceController to send integers that can be read by a Windows Forms app through this? Basically is there a way to use the "OnCustomCommand" function in this kind of service implementation? Thanks a lot!
Thanks a lot for responding to my comment. Now the font and colour are clearly visible even in my phone.
Excellent.
Thank you for this wonderful video. I was running into some serious roadblocks in rewriting a windows service at my current workplace due to the Microsoft project template making it difficult to debug initialization steps. Also, I totally agree with the text logging being an issue on long running windows services, since the person who wrote the old one was using text logging and it was blowing up the system despite changing to a new text file daily.
Thanks for sharing that real world example.
Great video, hope for more about services and communication between services and applications!
I can add it to the list.
Thanks Tim! Finally I can abandon my holy trio consisting of Windows service for production, console application for debuging and class library handling all the fun. Service and console app were very simplistic. Just start and stop Task provided by class library.
Nice!
Thank you very much! I am learning C# and i wanted to create a service for deleting a regedit folder if exists, i didn't know the language used on Windows services was c#. So this makes me learn it even more :D
Awesome!
Always nice to come back to this even if for a quick refresher
Good to hear
Question. Is this an elegant solution to use in a RESTful API, let's say, performing 1h DB polling in a certain GET route? I'm currently in need of using some kind of polling. I was considering using a threading timer which would eventually block-off the app from continuing or probably introducing some side-effects.
Thanks for another great video tim!
I'm using trying to use a service to listen on a socket server from a large number of client connections. The goal is to be able to run a scheduler on these clients and take their payload to store it in a central database.
Great!
Such an elegant way of explaining things... Awesome dude
Glad you think so!
Any particular reason, why aren't you simply casting exitCode to int instead of using Convert.ChangeType?
Your content is some of the best out there on any subject. Thank you so much!
I appreciate the kind words.
This is so useful and well explain thing to learn today, you are the best Tim
Glad it was helpful!
Hi @IAmTimCorey, I am having a problem I followed your guide and everything is working but the service when I start it over time the RAM consumption gets really high, do you know how can I fix this?
It sounds like you have a memory leak in your application. Maybe you are opening a resource and failing to properly close it. Maybe you are creating variables that are not properly scoped, so they stay in memory forever. There could be quite a few reasons for this, but these are the big ones to try to track down.
Hi Tim. Thank you so much for the video. I'm actually developing a Windows Service for my WPF app. I'm thinking of using your method. I have a question though. Is there a way to install this application when the user installed the WPF (I created the Installer for WPF app using NSIS script)? Also, do the users need to have .NET in their machines?
I'm not familiar with NSIS scripts, but yes, you can install a service when you install your WPF app.
If you are using .NET Framework, the user has to have that version of the .NET Framework installed on their machines (it comes with Windows, so it usually isn't a problem). For .NET projects (.NET 5+), you can include .NET as part of the application so that you don't need to install anything on the user's machine. That also means your app will always have the correct version of .NET that it needs.
@@IAmTimCorey Thanks for your prompt reply. When you say include .NET as part of the application, you mean publishing it using self-container command? The issue I am encountering is the WPF app is already more than 170,000 KB. If I publish this console app with the same technique, it would add about 60-70,000KB to the whole thing. Do you know if there is any way to work around this? The purpose is to receive notifications from AWS SNS in the background when WPF app is not running.
You can publish with the trimmed option, which will reduce the .NET code to only what your application needs. It can be tricky to get right if you use reflection, but otherwise it should be able to reduce the overall installation size of .NET (not your application code, though). With a 170MB application, though, it sounds like you have some room for shrinking the app itself. If a significant portion of the app is images, compress them and reduce their size. That will probably be enough of a savings (if you aren't doing it already) to make up for the space required by the .NET packages. At the end of the day, though, a 300MB application isn't really that big of a deal in most cases.
@@IAmTimCorey I didn't think of compressing images. I guess I will look into this. Thank you so much again!
Hi Tim,
OnException is not working.
Please suggest. It doesn't catching the exceptions
OnException is not an exception handler. It just allows you to log the exception or do other things to it. You need to still catch the exception properly.
Thank you for this great video. My goal from what I learned from your video is that I need to do check specific equipment on my network to make sure they are running and provide updates on the status of the equipment say for example every 10 minutes I would like my service to check the equipment every 10 minutes by doing a ping test to see if there is a return if there is no return the change the status code to indicate this. The information will update a database table as changes occur. I figured having running a Windows service is better than using a task manager to perform the job.
Sounds great.
Thanks again Tim! I was thinking about saving the day to day wallpaper-pictures coming from bing somewhere to keep them (sometimes very nice pics) , This will be the way ! So many good things coming from you ! Best Regards !
Sounds great!
good night teacher. Is it possible to start in foreground or close a program through services? when run in console the program works fine. when I turn it into a service it doesn't run correctly. my program monitors quinto one thought and started in windows. it monitors screen downtime. if it reaches the ingot time, it closes the program
Great video, nice introduction to a topic I knew absolutely nothing about.
I'd love to see a video on using Github within Microsoft Visual Studio for a simple project. The older one is good but think one using the actual baked-in functionality would be very helpful.
Something close to that is coming soon in a course. I'll be covering GitHub at some point as well.
Great! I was struggling trying to create a Windows Service using the template and this helped a lot.
Awesome!
hi! need some help. I can not run service with database. If I run it from debug folder with exe file - no problems. But when I start it as service, I get error: "Login failed for user". How to solve this?
You are probably using the Trusted credentials for your connection string. When you run it as a service, it is running under a different login, which doesn't have access rights to your database. Change which user the service runs under or give the user it runs under permissions to your SQL Server. Or, you can change to a username and password in your connection string instead of Trusted.
After I installed the cmd prompt multiple times haha but upon checking in Services it is not there. Can you help me?
Hi Tim. For me it is not quite clear how heartbite service support parameters like install, uninstall can you take me through?
@13min approx: I am confused...!
Your function TimerElapsed() returns void. Yet you set the property 'Elapsed' of the member variable _timer to equal itself plus the return value of TimerElapsed(), which is void.
So we're adding void to something...? I see that 'Elapsed' is an "ElapsedEventHandler", so I get that we're not dealing with regular variables here.
Please can you explain the wacky syntax here.
This is an event (Elapsed) and an event listener (TimerElapsed). To see a more detailed explanation, this video will help: th-cam.com/video/-1cftB9q1kQ/w-d-xo.html
Hi ,Tim. I created Service which starts a Windows Form application ( Process.Start(@"C:\Users.....batteryLevel.txt") When i test it in Visual Studio it works perfectly so batteryLevel.txt opens both in Task Manager and Desktop but when i install it as service , batteryLevel.txt shows only in Task Manager not in Desktop, Can you Help me please?
Services do not operate with a user interface. They don't interact with the logged in user. They typically are logged in under a service account. While technically it opened the file, it opened it on its own account. If you changed the account that the service logs in as to be your account, you might be able to get it to work but it would be clunky (it would only work under your account and only while it is open). You aren't supposed to do that directly. If you want to interact with the logged in user like this, try running a scheduled task instead of a service.
Thanks for the video.. but can I ask, how to brows a file in a service... I'm a student and working on project... I have to create a windows service to load data from csv to SQL server... I have already done the part need to enter data to SQL server... but I couldn't make the part where user have brows the file needed. Thank you.
A service doesn’t have a user interface, so the user cannot browse for a file. However, if you mean that the service looks for a file on its own, that can be done. I have a video on text files on this channel that should show you the code.
What software are you using to create this? I mean qt the absolute beginning where you made a new project. In what? Thanks! Is it c#?
It is called visual studio, you have to get the community version that it is the free one, or pay for any other.
@@BigGollum1 thanks very much for the response. Im old but new at this!
it's been a while i didn't stop here :) Happy i did today!
Thanks, usefull stuf (veeeerry usefull) well explained as usual!
I like that format you have for a while, quick snipet from A to Z with amazing (basic) ideas :) Thanks
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you are enjoying the content.
Tim i have a app, is a automation, run in chrome, when i run in visual studio works perfectly , but when i install a service , my app never is called and don't run, you have me a opnion to solve this ?
i need a service calling my app in a time space, for me not have to do this manually. sorry for my bad english!
Services run outside of the logged in user's profile so they can run when no one is logged on. It sounds like your app might need to run with your profile and interact with your information. Maybe try changing the permissions it runs under or change it from a service to an exe that runs in the background.
Hi Tim, i need to build an app for listen when a txt file drop into a folder, read it and write the info into a SQL database. Is this the best choice or what do you recommend me? Thanks!
A Windows Service sounds like a great choice for this.
@@IAmTimCorey Thank you very much Tim
You are a great instructor Tim! Keep it up... 👍🏻
Thanks!
Hello, I love your tutorials I want to thank you for those! It was very interesting! So I can build my own Windows Service project or install the service automatically. Thank you for explaining what everything does.
You are welcome!
Hi Tim, i had a question, is it possible to have perform 2 or more activity using the single service, say i want to clear my download folder, sending weekly/Monthly/Daily reminders to customer/Teams(based on preferences) etc to say a few. Basically i want to do multiple activities in a single service.is it possible ? if yes how can it be done. awating for your response :)
Absolutely. You can do as many processes as you want. When the timer event fires, you can call as many methods as you want. Each could do a different thing. Or, if you didn't need to run one process as often, you could either use two timers or you could use a long-running count to determine if a secondary method should be called.
@@IAmTimCorey Thanks Tim, That was really really helpful :)
@@praadeeprao2073 Along with that, if you're going to be running multiple processes within the server, and if they don't have much to do with each other, then you might want to look into using the "ASYNC / AWAIT" commands and the use of TASK too. I believe Tim might even have some videos here on these :)
great Video! I always Use Windows Service Project. When I do this, I always create a second project in the same solution with a simple GUI, to trigger the same methods as the service does, when I need to debug it. That also works pretty well, but maybe I will try this solution in the future.
Thanks!
I've been looking for a way to make sure my NumLock is on, my computer has it off when I turn it on or come back from the lock screen. Is that something i could do with this? I've tried all the registry and BIOS fixes i could find. I did find one but it only works at startup.
Not sure, sorry. Maybe the software that controls your keyboard (if you have a Logitech keyboard, for example) is messing with it.
Great tutorial! It help me a lot with a project that I had to create a service that makes a data copy from Arduino to a MySQL database.
Glad it helped!
Super useful. I love your idea of using a service to perform file maintenance! :)
Thank you!
Any idea why when I try to start my service I get “Error 1053: The Service did not Respond to the Start or Control Request in a Timely Fashion”?
If it starts when you are testing it, that probably means you have a permissions issue (the user the service is running under does not have the access rights it needs to execute the service).
Hello Tim, How can I get the Service wake up at certain time? In Windows Services, we can get the time from App.config. But how to do it here? Also how can we add log when the AddLog value is True in App.config file?
This service can read from app.config just like any other C# application. As for waking up at a certain time, you can have a timer check the time and trigger at the specific time.
I always wanted to learn how to do that. Excelent way of teaching, could you sometime in the future do a sample of a service watching a DB for example a notification service or anithing using a database
I will add it to the list. Thanks for the suggestion.
@@IAmTimCorey Also add that "email customer" option you mentioned at the end of the video. You're a great tutor Corey
Wow! Such a great tutorial and beautifully explained!
Thank you!
Hi Tim, amazing video that saved my life :-). I have a question though. When I create the service that way it is being seen from task manager. Is there any way of preventig the user from closing the application or restart it after it was shut down from task manager? I need this to run constantly on the server and just to be clear I am not writing any malware I just need this application to do it's job permanently. Thank You for Your answer in advance.
No, there isn't. If you wanted to be sure it was always running, you would need to create a second service that restarted the first service if it ever shut down. Just don't do the same thing in reverse for the second service. Otherwise, you will have a problem restarting your machine and you won't be able to update your services.
Excellent video!! Thank you very much for the quality content Tim
You are welcome.
Is there a way to do a debug friendly service on Framework 4.0? Topshelf doesn't seem to work for Framework 4.0.
Edit: needed to grab an older version of Topshelf. 3.0.0 installed. Testing to see if it has the functionality.
Great! If you can upgrade to Worker Services in .NET Core, you will really enjoy the experience.
An exception saying "cannot load file or assembly 'topshelf.service installer,version =4.2.1.215 or dependencies' on the line runasLocalsystem.. how do i fix this?
Have you tried the fixes here: stackoverflow.com/questions/47476023/could-not-load-file-or-assembly-topshelf Specifically, have you checked to be sure your dll is in the output folder for topshelf?
So I followed the instructions and it definitely works with the CMD service install. However I noticed windows has some issues if you install the service with powershell and throws the Error 1053: The Service did not Respond to the Start or Control Request in a Timely Fashion. Is there a difference between how powershell handles service installs than CMD? Im ignorant to these things :)
It sounds like the PowerShell window is running under different permissions than the CMD window. Check which account the service is running under. That account probably doesn't have the necessary permissions.
Great video! Is there a way to tell within code if the program is actually running as a service or from command line?
Very good .. I was thinking about parsing a text file automatically to database . and Now I get it .. thanks for the tip
Thanks for looking to Tim when you need answers
So Tim if I was to create an MVC application off our Tournament Tracker app from a previous app I should be able to access the data resources from that app. As long as this is setup as a separate project. Am I correct or not. The only thing that is common is the database content.
You can add a new MVC project to the solution and make that the UI, yes. That's what I do in the MVC add-on course. I keep all of the business logic and data access the same and just replace the UI.
I am using TopShelf this to create a Quart.NET Windows service that automatically picks up scheduled jobs and runs them. For the service to automatically pick up jobs, do I need to call the scheduler.Start() repeatedly inside a while loop in the Start() method? Or will calling it once when the windows service starts do the trick?
So far, in the console debugging, I didn't need to put it in a while loop; was wondering if it was the same for a service as well.
You should just need to start it once since the service is always running.
@IAmTimCorey I get a null reference exception on _timer.Start(). What could be the possible cause?
It sounds like you haven't instantiated the _timer variable.
Excellent explanation. Thanks, I was able to type along and understand.
Glad it helped!
Tim, another great video. I have used Task Scheduler for some similar programs that could just as well be services. Is there any advantage of one over the other?
It is a similar idea but there are a couple benefits of a service. First, they are exposed to the user more readily. Services and their status are listed in the task manager and in the Services portion of the control panel. Also, the user has access to easily choose if a service runs, when it runs, who's permissions it runs under, and more. That gives the user more control over their own system. Finally, a service can keep information between calls more easily. It could have a running counter, a list of things it has done, or anything else that might be useful across calls.
I run into error below:-
"Service cannot be started. System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80070520): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {0006F03A-0000-0000-C000-000000000046} failed due to the following error: 80070520 A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070520).
at System.Runtime.Remoting.RemotingServices.AllocateUninitializedObject(RuntimeType objectType)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.CreateInstance(RuntimeType serverType)
at System.Runtime.Remoting.Activation.ActivationServices.IsCurrentContextOK(RuntimeType serverType, Object[] props, Boolean bNewObj)
at System.RuntimeTypeHandle.CreateInstance(RuntimeType type, Boolean publicOnly, Boolean noCheck, Boolean& canBeCached, RuntimeMethodHandleInternal& ctor, Boolean& bNeedSecurityCheck)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceSlow(Boolean publicOnly, Boolean skipCheckThis, Boolean fillCache, StackCrawlMark& stackMark)
at System.RuntimeType.CreateInstanceDefaul..."
how can I fix this?
What if you are using a service to call something which is suspected to be a little 'memory leaky'? Is there a way to somehow recycle the process regularly to keep the server running well? I've had to resort to using scheduled tasks in the past, so that the server has chance to cool down overnight.
Wrap the call in a using statement to kill the memory leak (proper disposal). Also, if possible, identify and directly deal with the leak. In theory, you could run a scheduled job that recycled the service, but that's not ideal.
In File Explorer in the address bar you can just type "cmd" and it will open cmd to that directory. Great video by the way, still trying to think of some ideas on how to use this!
Thanks! I didn't know that.
Hi Tim, Great video on Creating Windows Service in C#.
One point, how to create one WITHOUT using "Topshelf"?
This is restriction for me as I have to work in client's environment and can't add this toollibrary "Topshelf".
Thank you very much for detailed process.
Currently have a console application that uses a while loop to check for messages using websockets and relays the message to a device over usb. I would like to use your example from the video to make my application a windows service. Seeing that it relies on a timer, can I do without the timer, or role a solution that runs the while loop every x secs?
Yep. The key is to keep the console app (which is really what it is) open. A socket connection that stays open will usually provide that option.
I have an application that is deployed using ClickOnce thus having administrator rights it is not needed to install it. Can I install a service without admin rights? Is there an automatic process of installing the service in the same time my app is installed?
I do not believe so. Services run outside of the logged in user's account. So, for example, you could have your service running even when no one is logged into the computer. I believe that takes admin rights to install.
Thanks Tim! I think the most important question is: How did you aquire this great knowledge?
Decades of experience and reading LOTS of documentation.
very excellent demo
i have a question :
i am creating a windows service and this service needs to handle a long running batches .
if i set time interval as 1 min the service will be invoked every one minute and process the files .
what happen if the service is already running and handling one batch in the mean while if we trigger the service (every one minute invocation)?
does it going to handle the second request in separate thread or does it going to kill the second request since it is already processing batch ?
can you please help me here .
Remember that the service is triggering itself. It is always running. We use a timer to trigger the next run of a method. Now in your case, it all depends on how you set things up. If it is calling an async method, yes, it could spawn multiple instances. If it is a synchronous method call, you will back up the operations. Either way, I would put something in the method call that cancels the event if a current process is running. You might actually disable the trigger while the update runs and then turn it back on afterwards. That way, you always only have one in the queue at a time.