Start or stop Windows service from command line

We normally use Services.msc to start or stop or disable or enable any service. We can do the same from windows command line also using net and sc utilities. Below are commands for controlling the operation of a service.

Command to stop a service:

net stop servicename

To start a service:

net start servicename

You need to have administrator privileges to run net start/stop commands. If you are just a normal user on the computer, you would get an error like below.

C:\>net start webclient
System error 5 has occurred.
Access is denied.
C:\>

To disable a service:

sc config servicename start= disabled

To enable a service:

sc config servicename start= demand

To make a service start automatically with system boot:

sc config servicename start= auto

Note: Space is mandatory after ‘=’ in the above sc commands.

This SC command works on a Windows 7 machine and also on the down-level editions of Windows i.e Windows XP/2003 and Windows Vista. Again, if you do not have administrator previliges you would get the below error.

C:\>sc config webclient start= auto
[SC] OpenService FAILED 5:
Access is denied.

Note that the service name is not the display name of a service. Each service is given a unique identification name which can be used with net or sc commands. For example, Remote procedure call (RPC) is the display name of the service. But the service name we need to use in the above commands is RpcSs.
So to start Remote procedure call service the command is:

net start RpcSsTo stop Remote procedure call service

net stop RpcSs

These service names are listed below for each service. The first column shows the display name of a service and the second column shows the service name that should be used in net start or net stop or sc config commands.