>Bonnie already chimed in here, but writing to the Event Log is definitely disallowed by default - you have to explicitly add permission to allow this.

After a few seconds, Windows allows to write to the event log. It is something weird I have never found out.

>One thing I do when trying to debug Windows services is to add a line like this which adds a delay to the startup, giving me time to attach a debugger.

I use this at the top:

    Private oTimer As System.Timers.Timer = New System.Timers.Timer(5000)

This tells the Windows Service to wait 5 seconds before starting. Usually, I would put it to 30 seconds. But, we are testing right now so I want it to be live asap.