How to debug a faulty service in Windows

Question

What are the steps to troubleshoot and debug a built-in service that won't start on Windows OS?

I'm not looking for a solution to the issue, but rather the root cause of the problem. I am aware that SCM manages built-in services in Windows. Is there a way to generate a verbose/debug log for a service SCM is attempting to start?

Let’s suppose: a WinRM service won’t start - how to troubleshoot that?

Answer 1

You would need to have the source code to debug.

Ask the developer for, or raise a support case.

Answer 2

the logging has to be builtin to the service. at startup, SCM just creates the process and calls the service entry point(s). see:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/services/writing-a-servicemain-function

Answer 3

Hello Tomasz,

The Microsoft documentation describes how to debug a service: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/services/debugging-a-service

As has already been pointed out, without the source code of the service, this advice is not easy to follow.

The WinRM service has some built-in logging, but it is difficult to interpret the logged information.

You could try capturing this log information and sharing it - I would take a look and see if it is helpful.

The command to create the trace is logman start gary -ets -p "Windows Remote Management Trace" 0xFFFFFFFF 255 -o why.etl & sc start WinRM & sc queryex WinRM & logman stop gary -ets

The file why.etl contains the trace; it would also be helpful to see the EXIT_CODE values in the "sc queryex" output.

Gary