How To Start, Stop or Restart a Service in Windows 10

Today, we will see how to manage services in Windows 10. We will see in detail how to start, stop or restart a service. It can be any service installed in the OS which runs in the background. Here are the steps.

Windows services are a special apps which run in the background. Most of them have no interaction with the user session and have no user interface. Services are one of most important parts of the Windows NT operating system family, which was started with Windows NT 3.1 and includes all modern Windows versions like Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Windows 10 has a huge number of services which exist out-of-the-box. Many third-party apps and even device drivers can add various services to Windows 10. You might be interested in learning how to manage services to check if a service affects the OS behavior in some bad way. Before we continue, I would like to remind you that we have a nice article about disabling services. See How to Disable A Service in Windows 10. It explains some basics about services. It is understood that disabled services cannot be started, stopped or restarted.

Before proceeding, sign in as an administrator to be able to manage services.

To manage services in Windows 10, we need to open a special MMC snap-in called "Services". You can open it as follows.

Press Win + R shortcut keys on the keyboard to open the Run dialog. Type services.msc in the Run box.

The Services console looks as follows.

Alternatively, you can do the following.

Press Win + X shortcut keys on the keyboard to open the Power user menu. Alternatively, you can right-click on the Start menu.

In the menu, select the item Computer Management.

Tip: You can tweak and customize the Win + X menu in Windows 10. Refer to these articles:

• Customize Win+X menu in Windows 10
• Restore Classic Control Panel shortcuts to Win+X menu in Windows 10
• Restore Control Panel items in Win+X menu in Windows 10 Creators Update
• Add Command Prompt back to Win+X Menu in Windows 10 Creators Update

The Computer Management utility will be opened. On the left, expand the tree view to Services and Applications\Services.

Note: Services in Windows 10 have dependencies. If you stop a service, all services which depend on the current service will be stopped. If you start a service again, its dependent services won't start automatically.

How to Start a Service in Windows 10

To start a service in Windows 10, select it in the service list.

On the toolbar, click on the green arrow to start it.

The service status column will show the "Running" value.

You can also double-click the desired service in the service list to open its properties. There, click the Start button to start the service.

Alternatively, you can use the console tool, "sc". It is a powerful app which will allow you to manage existing services in Windows 10.

You can use sc as follows.

Open an elevated command prompt and type the following commands:

sc start "Name of Service"

Note: It is very important to add a space after "=" and not before it.

Replace the "Name of Service" portion with the name of your service. The service name can be found in the Service Properties window shown above.

How to Stop a Service in Windows 10

There are several ways to stop a service in Windows 10.

You can use the stop button on the toolbar in the Services snap-in:

You can stop a service from the Properties window:

Finally, you can stop it by using the sc console tool. Run the following command in an elevated command prompt:

sc stop "Name of Service"

Replace the "Name of Service" portion with the name of your service.

How to Restart a Service in Windows 10

The same methods can be used to restart a service in Windows 10.

There is a restart button on the toolbar in the Services snap-in. See the screenshot below.

Finally, you can use the Task Manager app to start, stop and restart services in Windows 10. Open Task Manager and go to the Services tab.

Note: If you see no tabs, then click on the "More details" button.Right-click on a service in the list and select Start, Stop or Restart from the context menu.

That's it.