As a newbie to code writing this one got me really stumped. While I have been contemplating and get help from people here I turned my attention to some other area's that I need to master in order to get to the end of my project. I am now able to churn out windoes services / service installers etc... without much hassle.... all I need to do now is to get my service to drive these cmd line utilities :D I havent looked yet but am looking forward to seeing what you have done and how you did it.

That sounds like it could be interesting :) Look forward to reading it.!!

Hi, this is my first post so hopefully I get everything in here that I need too. Here is my problem, I have a command line utility that once running accepts commands / input before displaying results. To keep things simple I am starting to build my understanding using nslookup. ALl the threads I have found so far relate to executing a command and capturing output, nothing about actually 'driving' a command line utility through the secondary input of commands / instructions. Can someone help me out here... as mentioned, using nslookup as a sample utility I want to be able to: - Launch the nslookup utility with no arguments or parameters (this I can do). - At the point NSLookup returns the '>' prompt, I want to send some input / issue a command to the utility. For example www.codeproject.com. - I want to capture the results / output of the execution so that I can analyse the text stream within my application, and retain enough control to submit a second instruction to nslookup (i.e. it doesnt exit until I choose to exit). Any help greatly appreciated

Hi, I got round that by adding a line into the projectinstaller.cs file. (Sorry, I hope I get the formatting right, I am new to contributing to this kind of forum.... and pretty new to C# and programming in general) After the statement:

Public ProjectInstaller()
{
InitialiseComponent();
}

I Added the following:

public override void Install(IDictionary stateSaver)
{
base.Install(stateSaver);
ServiceController controller = new ServiceCOntroller("//Service Name");
controller.Start();
}

You will also need to add using System.ServiceProcess; at the top of the file. I hope this helps, it took me a while to find the answer searching google. It works a treat for me.

I just spent a long time getting to the bottom of this one..... Nothing ever seems as simple as it should be. Here is how I managed to do it, When you add in the installer project into your solution, in the Solution explorer right click and view properites of the installer project. Take a look down the right hand side of the properties screen pop and you will see a 'Prerequisites' button. On the pre-req screen you can add in or remove dependencies (I am building to .net 2.0 for some older clients), once you have selected the pre-req's you want check the radio button 'Download pre-req's from the same location as my application' then hit OK, then OK again to close the property page. At this point I save all files for the solution. If you are installing an older version of .net with your app you also need to take a look at the dependencies under the installation project. Expand the 'Detected Dependencies' container and double click 'Microsoft .net framework'. In the properties window beneath the solution explorer look at the version informaiton and select the appropriate version for your install (If you dont do this, the setup.exe bootstrap will install the older version of .net as a pre-req but the installer for your application will then error because it is expecting a newer version than has just been installed - the default on my system and I guess other VS 2008 systems is 3.5.21022). Once you build the solution be sure to install from setup.exe and not the MSI. I hope this helps, I found it very frustrating. (p.s. sorry if there are any spelling cock ups... I have yet to install a HTML spellcheck utility on my work machine).