CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windowsscriptingwindows-servicesoperating-systemfilesystems
Nate Sauber
Nate Sauber

Reputation: 1138

How to uninstall a windows service and delete its files without rebooting

My current project involves deploying an upgraded .exe file that runs as a Windows Service. In order to overwrite the existing .exe with the new version, I currently need to:

  1. Stop the service
  2. Uninstall the service
  3. Reboot the system (so Windows releases it's hold on the file)
  4. Deploy the new .exe
  5. Reinstall the service
  6. Start the upgraded service.

I'd like to avoid the reboot, so that this can be a fully scripted/automated upgrade.

Is there any way to avoid rebooting? Maybe a command-line tool that will force Windows to give up it's death grip on the old .exe?

Upvotes: 48

Views: 119538

Answers (10)

Chris Robertson
Chris Robertson

Reputation: 61

My batch file to stop and delete service

@echo off
title Service Uninstaller
color 0A
set blank=
set service=blank
:start
echo.&echo.&echo.
SET /P service=Enter the name of the service you want to uninstall:  

IF "%service%"=="" (ECHO Nothing is entered
GoTo :start)
cls
echo.&echo.&echo We will delete the service: %service%
ping -n 5 -w 1 127.0.0.1>nul
::net stop %service%
ping -n 2 -w 1 127.0.0.1>nul
sc delete %service%
pause
:end

Upvotes: 0

MSkuta
MSkuta

Reputation: 1783

I am using the InstallUtil.exe packed with .NET Framework.

The usage to uninstall is: InstallUtil '\path\to\assembly\with\the\installer\classes' /u so for example: installutil MyService.HostService.exe /u

The /u switch stands for uninstall, without it the util performs normal installation of the service. The utility stops the service if it is running and I never had problems with Windows keeping lock on the service files. You can read about other options of InstallUtil on MSDN.

P.S.:if you don't have installutil in your path variable use full path like this: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\InstallUtil.exe "C:\MyServiceFolder\MyService.HostService.exe" /u or if you need 64bit version it can be found in 'C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\' .The version number in path varies depending on .NET version.

Upvotes: 0

StingyJack
StingyJack

Reputation: 19479

sc delete "service name"

will delete a service. I find that the sc utility is much easier to locate than digging around for installutil. Remember to stop the service if you have not already.

Upvotes: 78

cxxl
cxxl

Reputation: 5399

I had sort of the same problem as you. I have a system service that i want to uninstall and afterwards reinstall as part of an update. On certain systems this would not work without a reboot. The problem was that a call to DeleteService() would return ok, but the following call to CreateService() would tell me the service was still there, but marked for deletion (error code 1072). The registry would reflect that, since the subkey was still there (under HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services), but "DeleteFlag" was set to 1. From that point on, only a reboot could fix the situation.

Some things that don't work:

  • Using "sc delete": it had the same problems as I. The call would return ok, but the service was not really gone and still in the registry with DeleteFlag = 1.
  • Deleting the key in the registry. The Service Manager seems to keep a database in memory and the registry is just a copy of it for the next boot.
  • Adding wait loops, waiting for .exe files to be ready to be overwritten, killing the process, etc.
  • Closing handles to the service. Which ones??

But here is what worked:

I noticed in some articles here on stackoverflow that net.exe has start/stop features as well (I only knew of sc.exe utility). And strangely enough, a "net stop svcname" plus a "sc delete svcname" worked! So net.exe must do something I don't do.

But net.exe doesn't contain an import to ControlService(), so how does it stop the service? I found out that net.exe spawns net1.exe, but net1.exe doesn't import ControlService() as well. I used the great API Monitor utility ( http://www.rohitab.com/apimonitor ) to see what net1.exe is doing, but it never called anything that looked promising.

But then I saw that it imports NetServiceControl() from NETAPI32.DLL (that had at least "Service" in its name!). MSDN says that this function is obsolete. Nevertheless, I found the prototype in LMSvc.h and some parameter description here: http://cyberkinetica.homeunix.net/os2tk45/srvfpgr/369_L2_NetServiceControlorN.html . When you load NETAPI32.DLL and use NetServiceControl(NULL, service_name, 3, 0, 0) (3 is for SERVICE_CTRL_UNINSTALL, which is used to stop) the service is stopped afterwards. And it can be deleted and reinstalled afterwards without DeleteFlag or reboot!

So it was never a problem of deleting, but of stopping the service properly. And NetServiceControl() does the trick. Sorry for the long post, but I thought it might help someone with similar problems. (Just for reference, I use Win7 SP1 x64.)

Upvotes: 20

chrishawn
chrishawn

Reputation: 578

Should it be necessary to manually remove a service:

  1. Run Regedit or regedt32.
  2. Find the registry key entry for your service under the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services
  3. Delete the Registry Key

You will have to reboot before the list gets updated in services

Upvotes: 2

Tao
Tao

Reputation: 14006

As noted by StingyJack and mcbala, and in reference to comments made by Mike L, my experience is that on a Windows 2000 machine, when uninstalling / reinstalling .Net services, "installutil /u" does require a reboot, even when the service was previously stopped. "sc /delete", on the other hand, does not require a reboot - it deletes the service right away (as long as it is stopped).

I have often wondered, actually, whether there is a good reason "installutil /u" requires a reboot... Is "sc /delete" actually doing something wrong / leaving something hanging?

Upvotes: 3

Patrick Desjardins
Patrick Desjardins

Reputation: 140923

(so Windows releases it's hold on the file)

Instead, do Ctrl+Alt+Del right after the Stop of the service and kill the .exe of the service. Than, you can uninstall the service without rebooting. This happened to me in the past and it solves the part that you need to reboot.

Upvotes: 2

Mike L
Mike L

Reputation: 4913

Both Jonathan and Charles are right... you've got to stop the service first, then uninstall/reinstall. Combining their two answers makes the perfect batch file or PowerShell script.

I will make mention of a caution learned the hard way -- Windows 2000 Server (possibly the client OS as well) will require a reboot before the reinstall no matter what. There must be a registry key that is not fully cleared until the box is rebooted. Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and later OS versions do not suffer that pain.

Upvotes: 2

Charles Bretana
Charles Bretana

Reputation: 146557

If in .net ( I'm not sure if it works for all windows services)

  • Stop the service (THis may be why you're having a problem.)
  • InstallUtil -u [name of executable]
  • Installutil -i [name of executable]
  • Start the service again...

Unless I'm changing the service's public interface, I often deploy upgraded versions of my services without even unistalling/reinstalling... ALl I do is stop the service, replace the files and restart the service again...

Upvotes: 3

Jonathan S.
Jonathan S.

Reputation: 5877

Are you not able to stop the service before the update (and restart after the update) using the commands below?

net stop <service name>
net start <service name>

Whenever I'm testing/deploying a service I'm able to upload files without reinstalling as long as the service is stopped. I'm not sure if the issue you are having is different.

Upvotes: 14

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