How to check if a service is running via batch file and start it, if it is not running?

Question

I want to write a batch file that performs the following operations:

• Check if a service is running
  • If is it running, quit the batch
  • If

Answer 1

Related with the answer by @DanielSerrano, I've been recently bit by localization of the sc.exe command, namely in Spanish. My proposal is to pin-point the line and token which holds numerical service state and interpret it, which should be much more robust:

@echo off

rem TODO: change to the desired service name
set TARGET_SERVICE=w32time

set SERVICE_STATE=
rem Surgically target third line, as some locales (such as Spanish) translated the utility's output
for /F "skip=3 tokens=3" %%i in ('""%windir%\system32\sc.exe" query "%TARGET_SERVICE%" 2>nul"') do (
  if not defined SERVICE_STATE set SERVICE_STATE=%%i
)
rem Process result
if not defined SERVICE_STATE (
  echo ERROR: could not obtain service state!
) else (
  rem NOTE: values correspond to "SERVICE_STATUS.dwCurrentState"
  rem https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms685996(v=vs.85).aspx
  if not %SERVICE_STATE%==4 (
    echo WARNING: service is not running
    rem TODO: perform desired operation
    rem net start "%TARGET_SERVICE%"
  ) else (
    echo INFORMATION: service is running
  )
)

Tested with:

• Windows XP (32-bit) English
• Windows 10 (32-bit) Spanish
• Windows 10 (64-bit) English