Services.exe Registry Settings
A version of this page is also available for
4/8/2010
Upon startup, Services.exe enumerates through all registry subkeys located under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Services registry key in the protected registry, where each subkey represents a service. Services.exe then uses the information located in the subkeys to initialize each service, one at a time, and in the order specified in the registry.
The following table shows the named values under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Services key.
| Value : type | Description |
|---|---|
AllowCmdLine : REG_DWORD |
Default value is set to 0. Allows the command-line parser to be turned off. If this value is set to 0, command-line parsing is disabled in services.exe. If this value is set to non-zero, command-line parsing is enabled. After this registry value has been set, no restarting is required for services.exe or any services. Services.exe refers to this registry value for every command-line operation. For more information about the command line options, see Using Services.exe from the Command Line. |
The following table shows the named values for each service, which are defined under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Services\<Service Name> subkey.
| Value : type | Description |
|---|---|
Context : REG_DWORD |
For Windows Mobile: Specifies the initial value that is passed into the initialization routine. |
Description : REG_SZ |
Description of display service. |
DisplayName : REG_SZ |
Display service name. |
Dll : REG_SZ |
Dynamic-link library (DLL) file to be loaded. |
Flags : REG_DWORD |
Specifies a set of flags used to modify the behavior of the ActivateService function. The following list shows the valid flags:
|
Index : REG_SZ |
Service index. |
Keep : REG_DWORD |
If Keep = 0, the DLL will be unloaded immediately after initialization. |
Order : REG_DWORD |
Order in which Services.exe will load each service. The service with the lowest order is loaded first. |
Prefix : REG_SZ |
Prefix of the DLL. |
For example, for the OBEX service to start as a service at boot time, the following registry key should be used.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Services\OBEX]
"FriendlyName"="OBEX"
"Dll"="OBEXSrVr.dll"
"Order"=dword:9
"Keep"=dword:1
"Prefix"="OBX"
"Index"=dword:0
The Services.exe super server will then call xxx_Init (Services.exe) exported from the service .dll file, where xxx is the prefix specified in the registry entry. Upon completion of this task, the super server passes the DWORD value located in the Context registry entry as the only argument to xxx_Init. The service initialization will be complete if xxx_Init returns a non-zero value. If xxx_Init returns a value of zero then the service will automatically be unloaded. After each service has been loaded, Services.exe checks to see if any sockets should be bound to the super services accept thread.
The DisplayName and Description registry values are not currently processed by Services.exe. They are listed in the preceding table as a convention for anyone wanting to write a user interface (UI) to display services running on a Windows Embedded CE device.
See Also
Reference
xxx_Init (Services.exe)
Services.exe Functions
ActivateService