Simplest way to restart service on a remote computer

Question

What\'s the easiest programmatic way to restart a service on a remote Windows system? Language or method doesn\'t matter as long as it doesn\'t require human interaction.

Answer 1

look at sysinternals for a variety of tools to help you achieve that goal. psService for example would restart a service on a remote machine.

Answer 2

This is what I do when I have restart a service remotely with different account

Open a CMD with different login

runas /noprofile /user:DOMAIN\USERNAME cmd

Use SC to stop and start

sc \\SERVERNAME query Tomcat8
sc \\SERVERNAME stop Tomcat8
sc \\SERVERNAME start Tomcat8

Answer 3

There will be so many instances where the service will go in to "stop pending".The Operating system will complain that it was "Not able to stop the service xyz." In case you want to make absolutely sure the service is restarted you should kill the process instead. You can do that by doing the following in a bat file

taskkill /F /IM processname.exe
timeout 20
sc start servicename

To find out which process is associated with your service, go to task manager--> Services tab-->Right Click on your Service--> Go to process.

Note that this should be a work around until you figure out why your service had to be restarted in the first place. You should look for memory leaks, infinite loops and other such conditions for your service to have become unresponsive.

Answer 4

I believe PowerShell now trumps the "sc" command in terms of simplicity:

Restart-Service "servicename"

Answer 5

I recommend the method given by doofledorfer.

If you really want to do it via a direct API call, then look at the OpenSCManager function. Below are sample functions to take a machine name and service, and stop or start them.

function ServiceStart(sMachine, sService : string) : boolean;  //start service, return TRUE if successful
var schm, schs : SC_Handle;
    ss         : TServiceStatus;
    psTemp     : PChar;
    dwChkP     : DWord;
begin
  ss.dwCurrentState := 0;
  schm := OpenSCManager(PChar(sMachine),Nil,SC_MANAGER_CONNECT);  //connect to the service control manager

  if(schm > 0)then begin // if successful...
    schs := OpenService( schm,PChar(sService),SERVICE_START or SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS);    // open service handle, start and query status
    if(schs > 0)then begin     // if successful...
      psTemp := nil;
      if (StartService(schs,0,psTemp)) and (QueryServiceStatus(schs,ss)) then
        while(SERVICE_RUNNING <> ss.dwCurrentState)do begin
          dwChkP := ss.dwCheckPoint;  //dwCheckPoint contains a value incremented periodically to report progress of a long operation.  Store it.
          Sleep(ss.dwWaitHint);  //Sleep for recommended time before checking status again
          if(not QueryServiceStatus(schs,ss))then
            break;  //couldn't check status
          if(ss.dwCheckPoint < dwChkP)then
            Break;  //if QueryServiceStatus didn't work for some reason, avoid infinite loop
        end;  //while not running
      CloseServiceHandle(schs);
    end;  //if able to get service handle
    CloseServiceHandle(schm);
  end;  //if able to get svc mgr handle
  Result := SERVICE_RUNNING = ss.dwCurrentState;  //if we were able to start it, return true
end;

function ServiceStop(sMachine, sService : string) : boolean;  //stop service, return TRUE if successful
var schm, schs : SC_Handle;
    ss         : TServiceStatus;
    dwChkP     : DWord;
begin
  schm := OpenSCManager(PChar(sMachine),nil,SC_MANAGER_CONNECT);

  if(schm > 0)then begin
    schs := OpenService(schm,PChar(sService),SERVICE_STOP or SERVICE_QUERY_STATUS);
    if(schs > 0)then begin
      if (ControlService(schs,SERVICE_CONTROL_STOP,ss)) and (QueryServiceStatus(schs,ss)) then
        while(SERVICE_STOPPED <> ss.dwCurrentState) do begin
          dwChkP := ss.dwCheckPoint;
          Sleep(ss.dwWaitHint);
          if(not QueryServiceStatus(schs,ss))then
            Break;

          if(ss.dwCheckPoint < dwChkP)then
            Break;
        end;  //while
      CloseServiceHandle(schs);
    end;  //if able to get svc handle
    CloseServiceHandle(schm);
  end;  //if able to get svc mgr handle
  Result := SERVICE_STOPPED = ss.dwCurrentState;
end;