How to create windows service to run a powershell script?

Question

I have infinite loop PowerShell (Testing purpose) script, which I want to run as a Service in Windows Server 2008 R2 (Standard).

I'm using the following command to create the Windows service,

sc.exe create "My PS1Service" binPath= "powershell.exe -NoLogo -Path D:\TEST\test.ps1"

And the result is [SC] CreateService SUCCESS

But when I try to run the service My PS1Service , it return the following error

Windows Could not srart the My PS1Service service on Local
Computer
Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control
request in a family

Any help here !!!

Particularity

possible duplicate of Can you write Windows services in Powershell – Polarization

look at: get-help New-Service. Also specify the full path to powershell.exe – Beth

You can't just run any executable as a service. It has to respond to requests of the service control manager. Typically, in C# this would involve inheriting from System.ServiceProcess.ServiceBase. Are you doing anything like that in test.ps1? – Hannah

@mikez , No im not doing anything like C# stuff. its just a PS1 script which has infinite loop & writes numbers into a file – Particularity

Try creating service which runs with local ID. Also check the execution policy. – Quaff

I was able to install service from .ps1 with nssm super quickly. It is much easier then WINSW an I don't understand the negative votes for nssm. Could somebody please comment on this? nssm is available in chocolatey repository, hence very painless installation. – Quadrivial

You can make Powershell run as a service with just the built-in tool sc.exe. But the service will never state that it was started successfully, which kind of defies the purpose. – Aeneas

Answer 1

Due to the length of the articles I don't want to paste them in the answer.

Check out this post which is the most comprehensive source of info I've found regarding powershell services: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/mt703436.aspx

which links to an example powershell service: http://jf.larvoire.free.fr/progs/PSService.ps1

I didn't end up successfully modifying this as it was going to take me longer to read through it and understand it than it would to use a different method for my use case, but I'd certainly be going back to that if I needed to create a service in powershell in the future.

Also this: https://www.sapien.com/blog/2017/07/12/write-a-windows-service-in-powershell/

Repatriate

I wouldn't normally post links in an answer as they are subject to breaking but these are very long articles. – Repatriate

The magazine contains dead links using bit.ly. Here's the french guy repo: github.com/JFLarvoire/SysToolsLib/blob/master/PowerShell/… – Bramante

You don't need to post everything, but you should post the basics. – Prakrit

Thank you. This is a very useful, simple to setup infrastructure. @Bramante the github link was invaluable. – Oxblood

Answer 2

I've been looking all over the place for a decent way to make a PS1 into a service. Easiest way I found is with Winsw: https://github.com/kohsuke/winsw

Works like a charm.

Cordate

Answer 3

I have had success with Non-sucking Service Manager (NSSM) as well. https://nssm.cc/

Tombouctou

I've subsequently used this and it works well and is easy to use – Repatriate

Answer 4

you can create by below step:

1. First go to the path where PowerShell script located.
2. Then run below Command: powershell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\filename.ps1

Korfonta

This does not work under any scenario – Woolson