Current state of the service is set to SERVICE_START_PENDING| BOOL StartService(hService, dwNumServiceArgs, lpServiceArgs) | |||
| SC_HANDLE hService; | |||
| DWORD dwNumServiceArgs; | |||
| LPTSTR *lpServiceArgs; |
The StartService function begins the execution of a service.
hService
Handle obtained from a previous CreateService or OpenService call.
dwNumServiceArgs
Number of arguments in the lpServiceArgs string. This value is passed on to the service being started.
lpServiceArgs
An array of argument strings passed on to a service for its use of receiving startup parameters.
Returns TRUE if the service has started to run and has responded with its first service status information. If the return value is FALSE, an error has occurred. Use GetLastError to determine the cause of the failure.
| Errors | Value | Meaning |
| ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED | The specified handle was not opened with SERVICE_START access. | |
| ERROR_INVALID_HANDLE | The specified handle is invalid. | |
| ERROR_PATH_NOT_FOUND | The service binary file could not be found. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_ALREADY_RUNNING | An instance of the service is already running. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_REQUEST_TIMEOUT | The service did not respond to the start request in a timely fashion. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_NO_THREAD | A thread could not be created for the Win32 service. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_DATABASE_LOCKED | The database is locked. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_DISABLED | The service has been disabled. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_DEPENDENCY_FAIL | The service depends on another service which has failed to start. | |
| ERROR_SERVICE_LOGON_FAILED | The service could not be logged on. |
The start of a Driver service is synchronous and the Service Control Manager does not return until the device driver is done initializing.
For a Win32 service, the Service Control Manager returns to the caller after it has spawned the service process (if one does not already exists because if the service shares a process with other services, the process may already be running) and has received notification from the service control dispatcher that the service thread was created successfully. It does not wait for the first response from the service because that may take a while. The Service Control Manager sets the following default values for the Win32 service before returning from the StartService call:
Current state of the service is set to SERVICE_START_PENDING
Control accepted is set to none (0)
Checkpoint value is set to 0
Wait hint time is set to 2 seconds
The application which issued the start request can periodically query the service status using QueryServiceStatus to check if the service has completely initialized.