How To Pass Arguments to a Service

   void Service_Main(DWORD dwArgc, LPTSTR *lpszArgv)
				

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Sometimes an auto-started service may want to receive arguments. Unfortunately, there is no method to pass arguments to a service through it's Service_Main(). These arguments can only be passed to a service through it's main(). (This entry point is defined by the user via the compiler. The default entry point is named main().) You can setup the arguments when you install the service through the CreateService API. For example, to pass the arguments "franki" and "hosun" to an auto-started service, you would pass the following string as the lpBinaryPathName parameter of CreateService(): When the service starts, it can obtain these arguments via its main() through argc and argv. To modify the arguments to a service, you call the ChangeServiceConfig API and modify the lpBinaryPathName parameter.

If you have configured your service to run as a shared service, each service originating from the service process will receive the same arguments when it is auto-started. You cannot pass unique arguments to each of the services using main(). The services will either have to create a file or registry key to pass unique arguments to each of the services being shared.