One windows service trying to start another: access denied

Question

I am running a Windows service on my production server. It is super-important that we have immediate recovery if the service crashes for any reason, so I wrote a monitor service whose sole purpose in life is to keep checking that the main service is up and running, and if it's not, to send out a distress signal. It's also supposed to start up the service that's down... and that's the part that's not working:

public static void CheckService(string checkServiceName, string myServiceName, bool restartIfStopped = false)
{
    var ctl = ServiceController.GetServices()
         .FirstOrDefault(s => s.ServiceName == checkServiceName);
    var error = "";
    if (ctl == null)
        error = "{0} is not installed!".Fmt(checkServiceName);
    else if (ctl.Status != ServiceControllerStatus.Running)
    {
        error = "{0} is in status {1}".Fmt(checkServiceName, ctl.Status);
        if (restartIfStopped)
            try
            {
                ctl.Start();
                // no error = success
                error += "\r\nService was automatically restarted.";
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                // send to windows application log
                Log("Failed to restart service:\r\n"+ex, myServiceName, EventLogEntryType.Warning);
            }
    }
    // other code here to send out email notifications
}

The problem is that when I try to restart the service with ctl.Start(), it exceptions out with the following error in the application log:

Failed to restart service:

System.InvalidOperationException: Cannot open MyService service on computer '.'. ---> System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Access is denied

Both services are set to run using "Network service". I have granted full security permission to "Network Service" on both the executable folders.

What else could be causing this?

Answer 1

You can set the service to restart in case of failure (as described here).

Answer 2

It looks like its an Administrative Permission.

I would try 2 things

1. Add Application Manifest to the solution, for more details refer : http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/629067/How-to-add-a-manifest-file-in-my-project

2. Give Manual rights

Go to c://Program Files/ApplicationFolder/.exe Right click on .exe and go to Properties then go Compability Tab and check true to Run this Program as an administrator Level.