Create Batch File to Start or End Window Services and Third Parties Services

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Warning: Manipulating windows services can have unpredictable effects on your system. You should create a system restore point before experimenting.

We all want to tweak or windows systems to the extreme to get the quickest, most powerful system possible. Many people will disable multiple window services manually before game playing. What a pain!

Many times people forget what the services do or forget to restart the important ones. Services can be easily changed by creating batch files.

The important commands are the following:
NET START - starts the service
NET STOP - ends the service

For example:
NET STOP "Error Reporting Service"


Output: The Error Reporting Service service was stopped successfully.

Knowing the commands, one can now easily create batch files called something like beforegame.bat and aftergame.bat.

Before.bat would contain all the NET STOP commands to end the nonessential services.
After.bat would be exactly the same except all the NET STOP commands would be replaced with NET START commands to restart all the common services.

A sample of the before.bat file might look something like this:

NET STOP "Error Reporting Service"
NET STOP "FTP Publishing Service"
SET STOP "IIS Admin"
NET STOP "Messenger"



Likewise, the after.bat file might look something like this:

NET START "Error Reporting Service"
NET START "FTP Publishing Service"
SET START "IIS Admin"
NET START "Messenger"



You may wish to reference this: list of services that can be disabled.

If your system ever becomes unstable and you want to return the services to their default settings, the default settings for the windows services can be found here.