Increasing the Windows Service Control Manager Timeout


Sometimes, the FireDaemon Zero Interactive Services Detection Service (UI0Detect) service fails to start. The side effect of this is if you switch desktop to Session 0, using FireDaemon Zero you will just see a black Session 0 desktop.


To debug, open the Windows Event Viewer and search for a message similar to the following:


A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Interactive Services Detection service to connect. The Interactive Services Detection service failed to start due to the following error:  The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.


The default timeout of the Windows Service Control Manager is 30,000 milliseconds or 30 seconds. To resolve the issue you need to modify the following registry key in order to configure the Windows Service Control Manager to wait for longer before reporting the service failed to start in the Windows Event Log:


HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ServicesPipeTimeout

You can make the change by editing the registry directly, or via Powershell by adjusting the -Value accordingly (in this case 180,000 milliseconds or 180 seconds):


Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control" -Name ServicesPipeTimeout -Value 180000 -Type DWord

For more information please see this Microsoft article.