Sharing Win32 Services

Last reviewed: November 2, 1995
Article ID: Q91698

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Win32 Application Programming Interface (API) included with:
```
    - Microsoft Windows NT versions 3.1 and 3.5
```

Win32 services are discussed in the overview for the Service Control Manager. The documentation says that:

   A Win32 service runs in a Win32 process which it may or may not share
   with other Win32 services.

Whether or not a service has its own process is determined by which of these service types is specified in the call to CreateService() to add the service to the Service Control Manager Database.

SERVICE_WIN32_OWN_PROCESS

   This service type indicates that only one service can run in the
   process. This allows an application to spawn multiple copies of a
   service under different names, each of which gets its own process. This
   is the most common type of service.

SERVICE_WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS

   This service type indicates that more than one service can be run in a
   single process. When the second service is started, it is started as a
   thread in the existing process. A new process is not created. An example
   of this is the LAN Manage Workstation and the LAN Manager Server. Note
   that the service must be started in the system account, which is
   .\System. The name must be NULL.

The service type for each service is stored in the registry. The values are as follows:

   SERVICE_WIN32_OWN_PROCESS    0x10
   SERVICE_WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS  0x20.

Additional reference words: 3.10 3.50
KBCategory: kbprg
KBSubcategory: BseService

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Last reviewed: November 2, 1995
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