Friday, October 17, 2008

Windows service recovery - enable actions for stops with errors checkbox

I'm baffled by the meaning of the check-box on the windows service recovery tab with the text "Enable actions for stops with errors"

The only Microsoft documentation I can find on it says "Select Enable actions for stops with errors in order to trigger the recovery actions that the service stopped with an error". What a great example of Ambiguish, a sub-type of English

The requirement is to have the service restart every time. A nightly anti-virus scan seems to be conflicting with the service occasionally, perhaps while accessing the DB or the logfile. Given the recurring but temporary nature of this conflict we need to be sure there's nothing blocking the service from restarting.

I ran some tests where I blocked access to the log file to trigger service failure. Bottom line, the service recovers the same whether or not the checkbox is selected. Maybe I need to reboot the PC to see the effects? At this point I'm just happy to confirm that the service restarts as many times as needed, and will move on.

1 comment:

BSwasHERE said...

I may have stumbled upon the associated flag in the service control data structures on MSDN:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms685937%28VS.85%29.aspx

Don't know for sure, but seems like it's just an option to prevent the Failure Actions if the service is just closing normally, but "too quickly".