What still takes ages to start up?

Does Windows still complain that your service is taking too long to
start and give up on you?

Or are you simply concerned that the service takes too long before it's
done the initialization it needs to do in order to be useful?

If the former, then you may need to post a concise-but-complete example
of code that reliably demonstrates the problem, since as near as I can
tell the code you posted shouldn't cause Windows to be concerned about
your start-up time.

If the latter, then that's an entirely different question.  All that
moving the initialization out of OnStart() does is keep Windows from
thinking that your service has hung.  But it won't change how long that
code takes to run; if the length of time it takes to run is also an
issue, you need to address that separately.

If the time-consuming aspect of your initialization involves
communicating over the Internet, then there may not be much you can do
about it.  You should, of course, design the service so that its local
behavior is independent of the Internet-dependent aspects; it should
always be responsive locally, and provide a good way of reporting back
"I'm not ready yet" or some similar thing.  But if you have to wait on
stuff on the other end of an Internet connection, you have to wait.

Pete

On Aug 27, 11:37 pm, "t...@test.com" <craig.whitco...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Maybe, maybe not. You could try looking at it from the point of view
of whoever is consuming the service. Is it important for the consumer
to know whether the service has finished the set-up work it does when
it starts? (For example, if the Windows Firewall Service is listed as
"Started", consumers would probably think it's safe to connect to the
Internet. Let's say the Firewall Service does what you do above, and
doesn't start censoring the Internet until DoSomething() is finished.
In this case, your approach is definitely cheating. But if requests to
and from the Internet will be pending in some sort of queue while the
Firewall service is DoingSomething, then it's still safe (but
certainly clumsy).)

As others have stated, a common compromise is to do only in OnStart()
what you need to tell the SCM whether you can actually start at all.
(For example, if the service really requires an Internet connection to
operate, then you might not want to tell the SCM you have started if
you cannot detect the presence of a suchly connection.)