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
)
visual-studio-2010 windows-services pre-build-event
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