Manually Start a Service

Topic

During troubleshooting, a manual service start or restart may be needed. 
 

Instructions 

.net service
Check the type of service

1. Open Services Console (services.msc).
2. Find the service you want to start manually and double-click on it.
3. The word NSSM in “Path to executable” indicates the service is NSSM hosted; otherwise, it is self-hosted.

 
Self-hosted Windows Services:

1. Open Services Console (services.msc).
2. Find the service you want to start manually and double-click on it. 
3. Open command prompt as administrator (cmd).
4. Navigate to the folder defined in “Path to executable” (see illustration below).
5. Run the executable.
6. See the output.

 
NSSM hosted services:

1. Open Services Console (services.msc).
2. Find the service you want to start manually and double-click on it.
3. Open command prompt as administrator (cmd).
4. Navigate to the folder defined in “Path to executable” (see illustration above).
5. Run command nssm edit “<service_name>” (Service name can be found in the service properties window).
6. From the “NSSM service editor” Application tab find the “Path” and “Argument”.
7. Move to the “Environment” tab in the same window (use ◀ and ▶ buttons to navigate).
8. Copy the content of the “Environment variables” field (if there is more than one variable it’s recommended to copy the content to a text editor).
9. Close the “NSSN service editor”.
10. For each environment variable run the command set <variable>=<value>.
11. Run the service using the “Path” and “Argument” from step 6: <path> <argument>.
12. See the output. 

For services that are not listed in the Services Console:

1. Open the WatchDog configuration file.
2. Find the service you want to start manually.
3. Open the command prompt as administrator (cmd).
4. Navigate to the folder defined in “WorkingDirectory” (see illustration below).
5. For each environment variable run the command set <variable>=<value> (do not use double-quotes; if the value is a path — replace “\\” with “\”).
6. Run the service using the “ExeName” and “CliArgs” (if defined): <ExeName> <CliArgs>.
7. See the output.

 
Node service

1. Open the WatchDog configuration file.
2. Find the service you want to start manually.
3. Open the command prompt as administrator (cmd).
4. Navigate to the folder defined in “WorkingDirectory” (see illustration below).
5. For each environment variable run the command set <variable>=<value> (do not use double-quotes; if the value is a path — replace “\\” with “\”).
6. Run the service using the command node bin\server.
7. See the output.