When you set a service to start automatically with delayed start, how long is the delay?

Question

Problem :

I am trying to install Windows services on my box but I found that there are two different options for automatically starting the Windows service on the Windows startup. First option is Automatic, and Second option is Automatic (Delayed start).

So my doubt is as follows:

What is the difference between “Automatic” and “Automatic (Delayed start)” in detail?

e.g. If you are trying to create the installer with the wix tool set. And the ServiceConfig element there has the DelayedAutoStart attribute. So how will that affect when the services are started at boot time?

Answer 1

In short I can tell you the difference between the two services as follows:

1.  The services which are set to Automatic will start during the boot process itself.

2.  The services which are set to start as Delayed will start shortly after the boot.

So “shortly after boot" it means 2 minutes after your last "automatic" service has started, by default. This can be achieved by configuring with the use of registry key.

The registry keys are as below :

·   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\<service name>\DelayedAutostart:-It will have the value as 1 if delayed and as 0 if not delayed.

·   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\AutoStartDelay or HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\AutoStartDelay (for Win 10): Here the decimal number of seconds to wait are needed to create this one and it applies globally to all Delayed services.