Configuring service restart with ‘restart service after’ parameter

windows-service

It appears that sc.exe isn't capable of setting the 'restart service after' parameter and powershell isn't capable of setting up service restarts at all.

My intended configuration is failure1/restart failure2/restart failure3/nothing with a five minute counter between each restart. The five minute timer is extremely important.

Is there anything else I can look at other than some registry hackery configure this?

Best Answer

The failure response is stored in the REG_BINARY value FailureActions under HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\<SERVICE_NAME>. You'll probably have to set it the way you want it on one machine using services.msc, grab the data from the FailureActions value in the Registry, and then script the configuration with reg add (or reg import if using a .REG file).

Related Solutions

Windows – Adding Dependency to a Service After Installation

This can also be done via an elevated command prompt using the sc command. The syntax is:

sc config [service name] depend= <Dependencies(separated by / (forward slash))>

Note: There is a space after the equals sign, and there is not one before it.

Warning: depend= parameter will overwrite existing dependencies list, not append. So for example, if ServiceA already depends on ServiceB and ServiceC, if you run depend= ServiceD, ServiceA will now depend only on ServiceD. (Thanks Matt!)

Examples

Dependency on one other service:

sc config ServiceA depend= ServiceB

Above means that ServiceA will not start until ServiceB has started. If you stop ServiceB, ServiceA will stop automatically.

Dependency on multiple other services:

sc config ServiceA depend= ServiceB/ServiceC/ServiceD/"Service Name With Spaces"

Above means that ServiceA will not start until ServiceB, ServiceC, and ServiceD have all started. If you stop any of ServiceB, ServiceC, or ServiceD, ServiceA will stop automatically.

To remove all dependencies:

sc config ServiceA depend= /

To list current dependencies:

sc qc ServiceA

How to restart a Windows service from a script

The poster wants to ensure the service is stopped before trying to restart it. You can use a loop on the output of "sc query" doing something like this:

:stop
sc stop myservice

rem cause a ~10 second sleep before checking the service state
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 10 -w 1000 > nul

sc query myservice | find /I "STATE" | find "STOPPED"
if errorlevel 1 goto :stop
goto :start

:start
net start | find /i "My Service">nul && goto :start
sc start myservice