Event Build pre & post to stop and restart Windows service - visual-studio-2010

Question

I've been experimenting with using build events to start and stop Windows service that are being built in my project. However for the pre & post builds fail with an error level 255. I've tried catching this with the pre-build with no luck.
Pre-build
if "$(ConfigurationName)" == "Debug"
(
net stop myService
if errorlevel 2
if errorlevel 255
:exit
:exit
)
Post-build
if "$(ConfigurationName)" == "Release"
(
copy $(TargetDir) C:\Media\Bin\$(ProjectName)
if errorlevel 1 BuildEventFailed
:BuildEventFailed
mkdir C:\Media\Bin\$(ProjectName)
copy $(TargetDir) C:\Media\Bin\$(ProjectName)
)
else if "$(ConfigurationName)" == "Debug"
(
net start myService
)

Answer 1

The following weblog by Joel Varty has a solution which I use:
Use Build Events to rebuild a Windows Service without having to manually stop/start it
The only problem is when you do a rebuild. Visual Studio cleans up the files before the pre-build event fires. This then off course fails because the service is still running. But regular builds work great. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Try using the opening parenthese on the first line of your pre-build code

Answer 3

The conditional statement doesn't require double-qoute ("")
It should be like
if $(ConfigurationName) == Debug (
net stop myService
...
)

Answer 4

This is how I got it to work:
(this solution was a part of an enterprise software where some dll files are reused by another app)
Model is a project which is referenced in Service project and it is built before Service. Which is why we write these codes in Model's Pre-Build Events:
Model Pre-Build Event:
if not exist "$(SolutionDir)UI\bin\Debug\ServiceFolder" mkdir "$(SolutionDir)UI\bin\Debug\ServiceFolder"
net start | find "[Service Name]"
if ERRORLEVEL 0 (
net stop "Service Name"
"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\InstallUtil.exe" -u "$(SolutionDir)UI\bin\Debug\ServiceFolder\Service.exe"
)
exit 0
creates a directory in output folder
finds the service by name
stops it
uninstalls it
exit 0 causes the build process to continue if error occurs here
Service Post-Build Event:
xcopy /E /Y "$(ProjectDir)bin\Debug\*" "$(SolutionDir)UI\bin\Debug\ServiceFolder"
"C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\InstallUtil.exe" "$(SolutionDir)UI\bin\Debug\ServiceFolder\Service.exe"
net start "Service Name"
copy everything needed for the service to a different folder
installs service
starts service
About permissions?
visual studio will ask for elevated permission automatically