How can I restart a windows service programmatically in .NET

I needed somethin more complex, because sometimes services with depencies couldnt be restarted and just throw exception or service could be set to "disabled" and so on.

So this is what i did:

(It checks if service does exist, if its "Disabled" it will set service to "Auto" and when it couldnt restart service it will use taskkill command to kill service through PID and then start it again (You need to be carefull with dependent services with this cause you will need to start/restart them too).

And it just returns true/false if restart was sucessfull

Tested on WIN10 only.

PS: working on version which detect dependent services when using taskkill and restart them too

//Get windows service status
    public static string GetServiceStatus(string NameOfService)
    {
        ServiceController sc = new ServiceController(NameOfService);

        switch (sc.Status)
        {
            case ServiceControllerStatus.Running:
                return "Running";
            case ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped:
                return "Stopped";
            case ServiceControllerStatus.Paused:
                return "Paused";
            case ServiceControllerStatus.StopPending:
                return "Stopping";
            case ServiceControllerStatus.StartPending:
                return "Starting";
            default:
                return "Status Changing";
        }
    }

    //finds if service exists in OS
    public static bool DoesServiceExist(string serviceName)
    {
        return ServiceController.GetServices().Any(serviceController => serviceController.ServiceName.Equals(serviceName));
    }

    //finds startup type of service
    public static string GetStartupType(string serviceName)
    {
        ManagementObject objManage = new ManagementObject("Win32_Service.Name='"+serviceName+"'");
        objManage.Get();

        string status1 = objManage["StartMode"].ToString();

        return status1;
    }

    //restart service through PID
    public static bool RestartServiceByPID(string NameOfService)
    {
        LogWriter log = new LogWriter("TaskKilling: " + NameOfService);

        string strCmdText = "/C taskkill /f /fi \"SERVICES eq " + NameOfService + "\"";
        Process.Start("CMD.exe", strCmdText);

        using(ServiceController ScvController = new ServiceController(NameOfService))
        {
            ScvController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped);

            if (GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Stopped")
            {
                ScvController.Start();
                ScvController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running);

                if (GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Running")
                {
                    return true;
                }
                else
                {
                    return false;
                }

            }
            else
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    //Restart windows service
    public static bool RestartWindowsService(string NameOfService)
    {

        try
        {
            //check if service exists
            if(DoesServiceExist(NameOfService) == false)
            {
                MessageBox.Show("Service " + NameOfService + " was not found.");
                return false;
            }
            else
            {
                //if it does it check startup type and if it is disabled it will set it to "Auto"
                if (GetStartupType(NameOfService) == "Disabled")
                {
                    using (var svc = new ServiceController(NameOfService))
                    {
                        ServiceHelper.ChangeStartMode(svc, ServiceStartMode.Automatic);

                        if (svc.Status != ServiceControllerStatus.Running)
                        {
                            svc.Start();
                            svc.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running);

                            if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Running")
                            {
                                return true;
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                return false;
                            }
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            svc.Stop();
                            svc.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped);

                            if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Stopped")
                            {
                                svc.Start();
                                svc.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running);

                                if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Running")
                                {
                                    return true;
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                    return false;
                                }
                            }
                            //restart through PID
                            else
                            {
                                return RestartServiceByPID(NameOfService);
                            }
                        }

                    }
                }
                //If service is not disabled it will restart it
                else
                {
                    using(ServiceController ScvController = new ServiceController(NameOfService))
                    {
                        if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Running")
                        {

                            ScvController.Stop();
                            ScvController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped);

                            if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Stopped")
                            {
                                ScvController.Start();
                                ScvController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running);

                                if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Running")
                                {
                                    return true;
                                }
                                else
                                {
                                    return false;
                                }

                            }
                            //if stopping service fails, it uses taskkill
                            else
                            {
                                return RestartServiceByPID(NameOfService);
                            }
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            ScvController.Start();
                            ScvController.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running);

                            if(GetServiceStatus(NameOfService) == "Running")
                            {
                                return true;
                            }
                            else
                            {
                                return false;
                            }

                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        catch(Exception ex)
        {
            return RestartServiceByPID(NameOfService);
        }
    }

You can set a service to restart after failure. So a restart can be forced by throwing an exception.

Use recovery tab on service properties.

Be sure to use reset fail count property to prevent service stopping altogether.

Call Environment.Exit with an error code greater than 0, which seems appropriate, then on install we configure the service to restart on error.

Environment.Exit(1);

I have done same thing in my Service. It is working fine.