Windows Services with custom User account

A Windows service runs under a specific account, the Account property needs to be set in the ServiceProcessInstaller. The property can take any of the below 4 values.

LocalService
NetworkService
LocalSystem
User

This feature comes in handy when we need the service to perform activities like accessing remote serves, file servers etc which have access for a specific user account, the service can be made to run under the same user account which has access to the remote resources so that the service can access the resources. To accomplish this, the Account property should be set to “User”


When the account property is set to “User”, the service will prompt for the user credentials to be entered wile installing the service.

Once the credentials are entered, the service will be installed under the specified
user account.