How to: Pause a Windows Service (Visual Basic)

Article
09/15/2021

Note

This article doesn't apply to hosted services in .NET. For the latest content on Windows services using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.BackgroundService and the Worker Service template, see:

This example uses the ServiceController component to pause the IIS Admin service on the local computer.

Example

Dim theController As System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController
theController = New System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController("IISAdmin")

' Pauses the service.
theController.Pause()

This code example is also available as an IntelliSense code snippet. In the code snippet picker, it is located in Windows Operating System > Windows Services. For more information, see Code Snippets.

Compiling the Code

This example requires:

A project reference to System.serviceprocess.dll.
Access to the members of the System.ServiceProcess namespace. Add an Imports statement if you are not fully qualifying member names in your code. For more information, see Imports Statement (.NET Namespace and Type).

Robust Programming

The MachineName property of the ServiceController class is the local computer by default. To reference Windows services on another computer, change the MachineName property to the name of that computer.

The following conditions may cause an exception:

The service cannot be paused. (InvalidOperationException)
An error occurred when accessing a system API. (Win32Exception)

.NET Framework Security

Control of services on the computer may be restricted by using the ServiceControllerPermissionAccess to set permissions in the ServiceControllerPermission.

Access to service information may be restricted by using the PermissionState to set permissions in the SecurityPermission.

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