Beware Windows exit codes

I have a Java process that is forked from a Windows service; the service process monitors the child Java process to make sure it's OK.

However, I was seeing in my logs that sometimes I would get the exit code 143. My code does not generate this exit code; further, there are no .dmp files or Java crash reports or exceptions logged or any other indication in my code that the process exited. The explanation is simple: my service and all other processes were receiving CTRL_SHUTDOWN_EVENT. My service process ignores this, but Java does not (see IBM's excellent document on Java Signal Handling).

The result is that my Java process would exit, my monitor would not know why, and restart it, at which time it would again get a shutdown event, etc, until the machine actually completed its shutdown.

Needless to say my service process now watches for those events...