ServiceController permissions in Windows 7

When you say that you started the application as Administrator, do you mean under an account in the Administrators group, or via a UAC prompt that requests administrator credentials? Without the UAC credentials prompt (or actually running as the Administrator account, not an account within the Administrators group), your application does not have permissions to modify services, so the exception you’re seeing is correct.

This bit of example code can check if your application is running as an administrator, and if not, launch a UAC prompt.

public static class VistaSecurity
{
    public static bool IsAdministrator()
    {
        WindowsIdentity identity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent();

        if (null != identity)
        {
            WindowsPrincipal principal = new WindowsPrincipal(identity);
            return principal.IsInRole(WindowsBuiltInRole.Administrator);
        }

        return false;
    }

    public static Process RunProcess(string name, string arguments)
    {
        string path = Path.GetDirectoryName(name);

        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(path))
        {
            path = Environment.CurrentDirectory;
        }

        ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo
        {
            UseShellExecute = true,
            WorkingDirectory = path,
            FileName = name,
            Arguments = arguments
        };

        if (!IsAdministrator())
        {
            info.Verb = "runas";
        }

        try
        {
            return Process.Start(info);
        }

        catch (Win32Exception ex)
        {
            Trace.WriteLine(ex);
        }

        return null;
    }
}