Windows administrators can manage services via: • The Services
snap-in (found under
Administrative Tools in Windows
Control Panel) • Sc.exe •
Windows PowerShell Services snap-in The Services snap-in, built upon
Microsoft Management Console, can connect to the local computer or a remote computer on the network, enabling users to: • view a list of installed services along with service name, descriptions and configuration • start, stop, pause or restart services • specify service parameters when applicable • change the startup type. Acceptable startup types include: •
Automatic: The service starts at system startup. •
Automatic (Delayed): The service starts a short while after the system has finished starting up. This option was introduced in
Windows Vista in an attempt to reduce the boot-to-desktop time. However, not all services support delayed start. •
Manual: The service starts only when explicitly summoned. •
Disabled: The service is disabled. It will not run. • change the
user account context in which the service operates • configure recovery actions that should be taken if a service fails • inspect service dependencies, discovering which services or device drivers depend on a given service or upon which services or device drivers a given service depends • export the list of services as a text file or as a
CSV file
Command line The
command-line tool to manage Windows services is sc.exe. It is available for all versions of
Windows NT. This utility is included with
Windows XP and later and also in
ReactOS. The sc command's scope of management is restricted to the local computer. However, starting with
Windows Server 2003, not only can sc do all that the Services snap-in does, but it can also install and uninstall services. The ReactOS version was developed by Ged Murphy and is licensed under the
GPL.
Examples The following example enumerates the status for active services & drivers. C:\>sc query The following example displays the status for the
Windows Event log service. • New-Service • Restart-Service • Resume-Service • Set-Service • Start-Service • Stop-Service • Suspend-Service
Other management tools Windows also includes components that can do a subset of what the snap-in, Sc.exe and PowerShell do. The
net command can start, stop, pause or resume a Windows service. In Windows Vista and later,
Windows Task Manager can show a list of installed services and start or stop them.
MSConfig can enable or disable (see startup type description above) Windows services. ==Installation==