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I'm familiar with Windows 10's services.msc. I can click the stop button, and I can click the start button, but I want to divide and conquer to figure out which service is causing trouble and locking up during restart, so I want to stop half of them, but restart the stopped set only after rebooting.

Is there a start parameter (for the Start parameters box) that says "yes, restart the service, but don't start up until after the following reboot," then click its start button so it remains stopped leading up to and during the reboot process?

Normally clicking the start button starts its service NOW—I want to delay the restart until after the reboot.

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  • Use MSCONFIG to control which services start (and the rest do not). Then add services until you find the service (or small group of services) which are causing the issue. This is a common troubleshooting approach. If you start with a minimal set, you can also add (start) services manually until one causes an issue.
    – anon
    Commented Dec 28, 2020 at 0:50
  • Set the service's "Startup type" to "Automatic". That setting governs what happens on the next reboot, i.e. it will do exactly what you need.
    – CoreTech
    Commented Dec 28, 2020 at 2:08
  • The event viewer is a good place to look over errors and such too that might help you pinpoint where there could be a problem. Some services when they are stopped won't restart automatically unless you manually restart, they are triggered to restart with another mechanism (e.g. Task Scheduler), or you restart anyway. So it may be if you stop services for additional troubleshooting, it'll work just the way you need it to work without anything further needed. You might find events helping you more quickly identify your problem in the event viewer logs though.
    – Vomit IT - Chunky Mess Style
    Commented Dec 28, 2020 at 2:41
  • see if it's helpful to you: stackoverflow.com/questions/133883/…
    – Gloria Gu
    Commented Dec 28, 2020 at 8:16

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Easiest might be to create a batch script to stop each service and then disable it, and another to do the opposite. As you go through the list (the binary search you suggest, i.e. identify which half the bad service is in, then which quarter... is efficient), comment out (semicolon or REM) the ones you want, and the scripts would also serve as a record of the search.

To stop and disable a service:

sc stop "service name"
sc config "service name" start=disabled

To enable (reset start type) and start a service:

sc config "service name" start={demand OR auto OR delayed-auto}
sc start "service name"

N.B.

  1. Make a disk image before trying this.
  2. Some Windows Services are vital. Stopping or disabling any of them can leave your machine unable to boot, and fixing that can be difficult, ergo, the disk image. Though the description in Services msc can be helpful, be very careful disabling services. See the Black Viper list of services for more information.
  3. Before creating the script, not current start type as shown in Windows Registry or Services msc. Use the same startup type afterwards, unless there's a specific reason. Of course, use one of the set e.g., start=demand.

Services msc

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