Not able to stop Windows service

Question

All this while, I was able to successfully start and stop a windows service that I created, but all of a sudden for the last 1 week, I get the following error when I stop it:

Windows could not stop the Apache Tomcat service A on Local computer.Error 1053: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

This is happening on both Windows 2008 & Windows 2012. This happens only for Tomcat service A and not for Tomcat service B which runs on the same servers.

Any help is appreciated!

Solution

This message simply means the service did not communicate with the Service Control Manager within the amount of time permitted in the registry.

You can try to increase the amount of time the service has to communicate with the service but that will require you to restart the computer.

You can modify the service timeout (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ServicesPipeTimeout) to 80000 and restart the computer. That might solve the problem.

Comments

[John K. N.]

Could you provide some more details on how you created this service? Are there any additional errors in the Windows event log? Are there any dependencies/dependants in the Tomcat A service?

[user1164061]

Thanks for the reply. Adding the timeout still shows the same error message, but after clicking "ok" on the message I see that the service has actually stopped ( when compared to the stuck "stopping" state before). Any further tips to solve this problem? Thanks!

[user5870571]

Just double checking did you restart the computer? After stopping the service have you restarted the computer?

[user1164061]

Yes. Restarted it. In fact there was no HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Services‌​PipeTimeout to begin with. So I created it (string) and set it to 80000 and restarted system. Increased to 120000 and restarted it again. Didn't help

[user5870571]

Given that the service stopped, perhaps it is still taking longer than the timeout allows. Try increasing the timeout, restarting, and stopping the service.

[user1164061]

I changed the SerciesPipeTimeout to Dword (as suggested in the internet) and set a value of 360000 in it which means 6 mins timeout. At the end of 2 mins, I still get the error...

[user5870571]

If the two services are identical, have you tried deleting and recreating the service that isn't stopping when it should?

[user1164061]

Service A and service B are not identical. Service B works fine with start/stop ; It is only Service A which has a problem now. I will try deleting it and creating a new one. Thanks!

[user5870571]

No I know they are separate but my understanding was the two services should be near identical given they both handle a tomcat instance.

[user1164061]

Yes.. you are correct.. they are near identical.

[user5870571]

Very cool, then recreating the service might fix the problem but ultimately it may be an issue with the Tomcat configuration.