Visual Basic ~ The service is not responding to the control function - vb.net

Question

I am trying to get a Visual Basic service to run.
Installing and uninstalling the service works perfectly, however, when trying to start the service via the task manager, the following error message is displayed:
Unable to start service
The operation could not be completed.
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
In the Event Viewer, the following error messages are logged in regard to this:
A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the ABC service to connect.
The ABC service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.
Trying to start the service via cmd using the following command:
net start "ABC"
...results in the following error message:
The service is not responding to the control function.
More help is available by typing NET HELPMSG 2186.
And unhelpfully, typing "NET HELPMSG 2186" only repeats the first half of the error message:
The service is not responding to the control function.
I've had a look at the source code of the service, but I'm not quite familiar with its architecture. However, I could identify a few functions that I feel may be relevant for the service, namely:
OnStart(String())
OnStop()
New()
From what I've gathered out of related threads thus far, the error message could possibly mean that the service does not have the proper functions to be addressed by the service control functions. Could this be the case here?
If not, what approach would you suggest for debugging this?
Additional Info (21-Jul-2018):
Here's what the OnStart method looks like:
Protected Overrides Sub OnStart(ByVal args() As String)
Dim log As ILogger = CommonObjectFactory.instance.buildLogger(LogName.ABCDSys).open("OnStart")
Dim oCallback As Threading.TimerCallback = Nothing
Try
Dim numTimeDuration As Integer = 30000
Try
'numTimeDuration = Convert.ToInt32(ABCDA.ABCProperties.Instance.GetValue("DTimer", "DSys", "5000"))
Dim config As IDServiceConfiguration = CommonObjectFactory.instance.buildConfigurationFactory().buildDSConfiguration()
numTimeDuration = config.DTimer
Catch ex As Exception
log.error(ex)
End Try
log.info("Setting up a " & numTimeDuration / 1000 & " second timer")
oCallback = New Threading.TimerCallback(AddressOf TimerEvent)
_timer = New System.Threading.Timer(oCallback, Nothing, numTimeDuration, numTimeDuration)
Catch ex As Exception
log.error(ex)
End Try
log.close()
log = Nothing
End Sub
As far as I know, this service should check documents every 30 seconds, and from what I can see in the code that'S what should happen.
However, when trying to start the service, it crashes immediately. Not after 30 seconds, but right away, even though the error message in the Event Log says "A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds)". In fact, I had problems with this service before where it crashed after 30 seconds, but in all these cases it wrote a helpful error message in one of the logs. Now, not even the logs are created.
I wonder if something is wrong with the logging. That would be this line, right?
Dim log As ILogger = CommonObjectFactory.instance.buildLogger(LogName.ABCDSys).open("OnStart")
What would be the best way for me to debug this? Due to the company workflow, I can't test this on my development machine but have to run the entire code through TeamCity first before testing it on another machine, so I'm not sure how to handle debugging. Given hat the service crashes immediately, I don't even have time to attach a debugger to it. Is there a way to start it attached to a debugger?

Answer 1

You need to share the code, particularly in the OnStart() method. My guess is that this code is blocking or long-running. You have only 30 seconds to start or stop a service before Windows thinks a problem happened. The typical approach is to start a thread in OnStart and do the real business logic there.