At the risk of stating the obvious, if you have any C/C++/Java background, I think C# offers you the lowest point of entry. Assuming you’re using Visual Studio 2008, you can follow these steps: Open Visual Studio 2008, and select the File|New|Project menu option. In the New Project dialog… Select the Visual C#|Windows node in … Read more
Apache Commons Daemon is a good alternative. It has Procrun for windows services, and Jsvc for unix daemons. It uses less restrictive Apache license, and Apache Tomcat uses it as a part of itself to run on Windows and Linux! To get it work is a bit tricky, but there is an exhaustive article with … Read more
You can indicate the new process should be started with elevated permissions by setting the Verb property of your startInfo object to ‘runas’, as follows: startInfo.Verb = “runas”; This will cause Windows to behave as if the process has been started from Explorer with the “Run as Administrator” menu command. This does mean the UAC … Read more
InstallUtil.exe: As others have stated, InstallUtil.exe is intended for development use only, not for final distribution of your service. MSI: The normal way to deploy services in the fashion you describe (with a proper entry in add/remove programs) would be to use an MSI installer created using a tool designed to help you do so … Read more