Windows 2000 Service Listing

The Windows 2000 (and later) operating systems provide system services, defined by Microsoft as a program, routine, or process that performs a specific system function to support other programs, particularly at a low (close to the hardware) level.

Unfortunately, the service management tools provided by Windows 2000 leave a lot to be desired, especially if you're trying to develop or troubleshoot a service. ServiceEnum has been developed to identify services which haven't started correctly. For many service classes (such as device drivers), the only clue you've got a dodgy driver installed is the following cryptic message displayed during logon:

More often than not you examine the event log to find nothing of note.

ServiceEnum is a command line tool that will show all services installed on your system, along with the service state (running, stopped etc.) and the startup type (system, manual etc.)

Download binaries/ServiceEnum.zip.

Command Line Options

/?	Show usage
/brokenServices	Show only services not in Running state but which should be
/deleteService Service Name	Delete the specified service
/deleteNoPrompt	Delete service without prompting (for batch scripts)

Warning! Only delete a service if you know what you're doing! Some services are designed to start and then exit immediately, so may show up in the broken service list even when they are valid. Please back your system up before deleting services!

Example usage

Typically you would identify a badly installed service by running:

then back your system up, and delete the offending service:

Source Code

Source code for the application is available - ServiceEnumSource.zip. A Project file for Visual Studio .Net 2003 is provided.