I have the following code to check if a Windows service exists but it keeps throwing an exception if the service does not exist.
Dim controller As New ServiceController("test") If controller.Status = Nothing Then Label2.Text = "" Else ListBox1.Items.Add("Service found") End If What I would like is do nothing if not found and add to listbox if found.
That may be by design since ServiceController is meant to "connect to and control the behavior of existing services" (c.f. here). Reading here the Status property is supposed to throw an InvalidOperationException if the service does not exist.
What you could do is use the GetServices() method to list the services on the machine and see if the thing you are looking for exists - perhaps something like:
Dim servicesButNotDevices As ServiceController() = ServiceController.GetServices() For Each service As ServiceController In servicesButNotDevices If service.ServiceName = "my service name" Then 'May also use DispalyName property depending on your use case 'Put in list box Exit For End If Next If you didn't want to catch and handle the exception
ServiceName and the DisplayName properties depending on what you're searching for. For example, running this on my machine I have a service with a ServiceName of "AdobeARMservice" but it has a DisplayName of "Adobe Acrobat Update Service"...so you might want to switch properties depending on whether you're looking for the friendly name of the service or not...According to the ServiceController documentation, this is the expected behavior. If the service exists, the constructor makes a ServiceController instance that provides an interface to control the service. If the service does not exist, there is nothing to do so the constructor throws an ArgumentException.
The following code should do what you need:
Try Dim controller As New ServiceController("test") ListBox1.Items.Add("Service found") Catch ex As ArgumentException Label2.Text = "" End Try Thanks for everyones input on this.
I used the idea from NKVU but tweaked it a little:
For Each service As ServiceController In ServiceController.GetServices() Dim serviceName As String = service.ServiceName If serviceName = "mmg" Then ListBox1.Items.Add(serviceName) End If Next Public Shared Function GetService() As ServiceProcess.ServiceController Try Dim Services = (From f In ServiceProcess.ServiceController.GetServices Select f Where f.ServiceName = "BilgiSoft").ToList If Services.Count = 1 Then Return Services(0) Exit Function Else Return Nothing Exit Function End If Catch ex As Exception Return Nothing Exit Function End Try End Function 