Registry entries for custom service - when to create/remove them?

Question

I am currently making my first attempts at creating a simple Windows Service using C# and .NET. I am at a point where the service does what it is supposed to do, but uses a lot of hard-coded values. I want to move these values to a separate configuration area - probably the Windows registry. I would like to provide my service with a kind of default configuration - if the settings / registry entries aren't present, create a set of default values and warn the user that the default values may need to be adjusted. However, I am unsure on when to perform this operation:

• I could create the registry entries from the constructor of the ServiceBase descendant.

• I could create the entries within the installer I created following the tutorial (a subclass System.Configuration.Install.Installer).

I am unsure whether there are other options, what the pros and cons of these options are and whether there is a "correct" approach to perform this. I am even less sure if and where I should provide code to automatically remove the registry entries.

Answer 1

If you're using the register, you should let the installer to create the default key/values pairs, and let the uninstaller delete them.

Another way is to use the app config file, which is more simple then dealing with registry, See this posts: Simplest way to have a configuration file in a Windows Forms C# Application