Author: Jonas Bilinkevicius

How can I detect if I can install and run a service on the current operating 
system? I was just going to detect the operating system, but I figured it might be 
better to directly detect the service control - but not sure how to do that.

Answer:

After installing a service (using the -install command line parameter) you can use 
the following code to start the service:
1   
2   function StartService(Name: string): boolean;
3   var
4     Scm: SC_HANDLE;
5     Service: SC_HANDLE;
6     p: pChar;
7   begin
8     Result := false;
9     Scm := OpenSCManager(nil, nil, SC_MANAGER_ALL_ACCESS);
10    if Scm <> 0 then
11    begin
12      Service := OpenService(Scm, pChar(Name), SC_MANAGER_ALL_ACCESS);
13      if Service <> 0 then
14      begin
15        p := nil;
16        if WinSvc.StartService(Service, 0, p) then
17          Result := True;
18        CloseServiceHandle(Service);
19      end;
20      CloseServiceHandle(Scm);
21    end;
22  end;