A Windows service is an application that runs continuously in the background and doesn't interact with the user of the computer. They typically start up when the computer is booted. You can see a list of installed services in Windows 7 by navigating in your Start menu to Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services, or by selecting Run from your Start menu and entering services.msc.
During an installation, your MSI package may need to interact with services that already exist on the end user's computer or even install and configure its own. In this chapter, we'll cover the WiX elements that allow you to do this. Specifically, we'll cover the following topics:
Creating a simple Windows service
Registering and configuring services with the
sc.exeutilityInstalling a service with the
ServiceInstallelementUsing
ServiceControlto start, stop, and remove a serviceSetting a user account, dependencies, and recovery options