"The TestStand service did not start up promptly"

Question

I have a LabView Operator Interface startup problem with TS 4.1. If
the OI is started immediately after system boot the operator may get apopup error from TestStand:
"The TestStand service did not start up promptly"
The
TestStand Service has a dependency on RPC so if either does not startup
before the operator launches the OI, he gets the message. If he
dismisses the message there is no further error i.e. the software
continues to work OK.
The real problem is the end user does not like this message and wants it removed.
 Any suggestions how I can get rid of this message?
Only ideas I can see at the moment - either to have some kind of
delay timer on startup (this would need to be around 1-2  mins after
boot
on the system in question to stop it happening) or perhaps some LabView
code to poll the status of the TestStand service somehow so that we
wait for service to start before the OI communicates with testStand -
and thus the
popup does not occur.

Answer 1

The service should not normally take any significant amount of time to startup. There are some issues with service startup that we have noticed in some cases, but I don't remember the details. I will try and find out and get back to you. In the meantime, or as a possible solution, you can use the Windows SDK to check the status of the service and to wait until it is running. I'm not sure if the following can be directly translated into LabVIEW dll calls, but it would definitely be possible to create a C/C++ dll with the following code in it and call it from LabVIEW (If you do not have access to a C/C++ compiler and/or would like me to, I can probably build a dll with this code in it for you):
int MakeSureServiceIsRunning(void)
    SERVICE_STATUS serviceStatus;
    SC_HANDLE hService = NULL;
    SC_HANDLE hSCM = NULL;
    // Put variable into a good initial state for return value.
    serviceStatus.dwCurrentState = SERVICE_START_PENDING;
    hSCM = OpenSCManager(NULL, NULL, SC_MANAGER_CONNECT);
    if (hSCM == NULL)
        goto Error;
    hService = OpenService(hSCM, "National Instruments TestStand Service", SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS);
    if (hService == NULL)
        goto Error;
    do
        if(!QueryServiceStatus(hService, &serviceStatus))
            goto Error;
        if(serviceStatus.dwCurrentState != SERVICE_RUNNING)
            Sleep(100); // don't just do busy waiting, give up cpu time to other threads.
    while(serviceStatus.dwCurrentState == SERVICE_START_PENDING);
Error:
    if (hService != NULL)
        CloseServiceHandle(hService);
    if (hSCM != NULL)
        CloseServiceHandle(hSCM);
    if (serviceStatus.dwCurrentState == SERVICE_RUNNING)
        return 1;
    else
        return 0; // An error occurred, or service is in an unexpected state.
Or alternatively, if you want to do the polling inside of LabVIEW you could just do the following in the C/C++ dll:
int GetTestStandServiceStatus(unsigned int *serviceStatusReturnResult)
    SERVICE_STATUS serviceStatus;
    SC_HANDLE hService = NULL;
    SC_HANDLE hSCM = NULL;
    hSCM = OpenSCManager(NULL, NULL, SC_MANAGER_CONNECT);
    if (hSCM == NULL)
        goto Error;
    hService = OpenService(hSCM, "National Instruments TestStand Service", SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS);
    if (hService == NULL)
        goto Error;
    if(!QueryServiceStatus(hService, &serviceStatus))
        goto Error;
    *serviceStatusReturnResult = serviceStatus.dwCurrentState;
    CloseServiceHandle(hService);
    CloseServiceHandle(hSCM);
    return 1; // success
Error:
    if (hService != NULL)
        CloseServiceHandle(hService);
    if (hSCM != NULL)
        CloseServiceHandle(hSCM);
    return 0; // An error occurred. Perhaps TestStand service isn't registered.