How to start as windows service?

Support
1

Hello there I used syncthing for a few months on Mac and android. Now I got the Windows pc in to the group and here it behaves strange.

I installed the program and then it started automatically. I set it up and everything was fine.

Today I had a warning about not enough disk space (not true) so I tried restarting syncthing on my windows.

I killed the process in the task manager and searched for the installation folder, where I clicked on syncthing.exe.

It started well, but all my settings and my established connection was no longer there.

On the internet, there was a talk about the difference between running as a user and running as a Windows service. I do not know many about this, so I just tried what happens if I start the installer again. The installer runs through and opens syncthing after it’s done. And now, here I still have all settings.

So I guess it has to do with the way the software is started?

How can I start the service without running the installer?

2

If Syncthing is installed as a Windows Service, you can find it as follows:

Type “services” in the start menu and click on “Services”, or alternatively open the Service Manager directly: Windows-Key+R, Enter “services.msc”, press enter. In the service manager, scroll until you find a service named “Syncthing Service”. Right-click it and you can start, stop or restart it. You can also change its autostart settings there.

3

That worked, thanks!

Do you know by chance a way to make a desktop icon that starts this process?

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4

You can just create a shortcut to sc.exe with the parameters start <service-name>.

  1. Right-click on the desktop, go to New → Shortcut.
  2. Enter sc.exe in the path.
  3. Confirm and save.

Then you can right-click, go to Properties, and add the parameters like this:

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5

The Syncthing Windows Setup documentation describes the difference between installing for all users of the computer (service) vs. installing only for the current user:

https://github.com/Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup/

The documentation refers to installing for the current user as non administrative installation mode, and it refers to installing for all users as administrative installation mode. Administrative installation mode installs Syncthing as a service. (If you are not familiar with Windows services, they are a special type of background application. Use a web search engine to look for “What is a Windows service?” for more information.)

If you are the only user of the computer and you don’t need Syncthing to start before logon, then it’s usually easier to use the non administrative installation mode (i.e., per-user).

In any case, the documentation spells out the differences between the two installation modes.

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