Hi,

> I want to be able to determine if the database
> service is running when the application starts, start the service if
> it's not, and give the user the option to stop the service when
> closing the application. I'm presuming that end-users PCs may not
> be state-of-the-art, high-end machines and they may not want to
> leave the service running when not using the application.

But when a user has installed a other application what is using
FireBird/Interbase ?
You can't close simply the running desktop-server if you're not sure you're
the realy the only one using it.
IMO consider an other option. (btw ibserver doesn't take much memory)

Regards,
Arno