Need a way to check status of Windows service programmatically

here's what I had to do. It's ugly, but it works beautifully.

String STATE_PREFIX = "STATE              : ";

String s = runProcess("sc query \""+serviceName+"\"");
// check that the temp string contains the status prefix
int ix = s.indexOf(STATE_PREFIX);
if (ix >= 0) {
  // compare status number to one of the states
  String stateStr = s.substring(ix+STATE_PREFIX.length(), ix+STATE_PREFIX.length() + 1);
  int state = Integer.parseInt(stateStr);
  switch(state) {
    case (1): // service stopped
      break;
    case (4): // service started
      break;
   }
}

runProcess is a private method that runs the given string as a command line process and returns the resulting output. As I said, ugly, but works. Hope this helps.

You can create a small VBS on-th-fly, launch it and capture its return code.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;

public class VBSUtils {
  private VBSUtils() {  }

  public static boolean isServiceRunning(String serviceName) {
    try {
        File file = File.createTempFile("realhowto",".vbs");
        file.deleteOnExit();
        FileWriter fw = new java.io.FileWriter(file);

        String vbs = "Set sh = CreateObject(\"Shell.Application\") \n"
                   + "If sh.IsServiceRunning(\""+ serviceName +"\") Then \n"
                   + "   wscript.Quit(1) \n"
                   + "End If \n"
                   + "wscript.Quit(0) \n";
        fw.write(vbs);
        fw.close();
        Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("wscript " + file.getPath());
        p.waitFor();
        return (p.exitValue() == 1);
    }
    catch(Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    return false;
  }


  public static void main(String[] args){
    //
    // DEMO
    //
    String result = "";
    msgBox("Check if service 'Themes' is running (should be yes)");
    result = isServiceRunning("Themes") ? "" : " NOT ";
    msgBox("service 'Themes' is " + result + " running ");

    msgBox("Check if service 'foo' is running (should be no)");
    result = isServiceRunning("foo") ? "" : " NOT ";
    msgBox("service 'foo' is " + result + " running ");
  }

  public static void msgBox(String msg) {
    javax.swing.JOptionPane.showConfirmDialog((java.awt.Component)
       null, msg, "VBSUtils", javax.swing.JOptionPane.DEFAULT_OPTION);
  }
}

Based on the other answers I constructed the following code to check for Windows Service status:

public void checkService() {
  String serviceName = "myService";  

  try {
    Process process = new ProcessBuilder("C:\\Windows\\System32\\sc.exe", "query" , serviceName ).start();
    InputStream is = process.getInputStream();
    InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(is);
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(isr);

    String line;
    String scOutput = "";

    // Append the buffer lines into one string
    while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
        scOutput +=  line + "\n" ;
    }

    if (scOutput.contains("STATE")) {
        if (scOutput.contains("RUNNING")) {
            System.out.println("Service running");
        } else {
            System.out.println("Service stopped");
        }       
    } else {
        System.out.println("Unknown service");
    }
  } catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
  } 
}

I have been dealing with installers for years and the trick is to create your own EXE and call it on setup. This offers good flexibility like displaying precise error messages in the event an error occurs, and have success-based return values so your installer knows about what happened.

Here's how to start, stop and query states for windows services (C++): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684941(VS.85).aspx (VB and C# offers similar functions)