I have been developing setup packages for our WCF Self-hosted services using Wix 3-0. Mitch Denny showed me a great trick today. In the setup packageI was developing ‘I had forgotten to addin the ability to removeon uninstall. This meant that I had a service but no way to remove it. What Mitch showed me was a cool Command line utility call sc. This utility allows you to manipulate the services on your local machine or a remote one.   For my purposes I just did a sc delete <ServiceName>.

The full list of commands is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\VC>SC
DESCRIPTION:
SC is a command line program used for communicating with the
Service Control Manager and services.
USAGE:
sc <server> [command] [service name] <option1> <option2>…

The option <server> has the form “\\ServerName”
Further help on commands can be obtained by typing: “sc [command]“
Commands:
query———–Queries the status for a service, or
enumerates the status for types of services.
queryex———Queries the extended status for a service, or
enumerates the status for types of services.
start———–Starts a service.
pause———–Sends a PAUSE control request to a service.
interrogate—–Sends an INTERROGATE control request to a service.
continue——–Sends a CONTINUE control request to a service.
stop————Sends a STOP request to a service.
config———-Changes the configuration of a service (persistent).
description—–Changes the description of a service.
failure———Changes the actions taken by a service upon failure.
failureflag—–Changes the failure actions flag of a service.
sidtype———Changes the service SID type of a service.
privs———–Changes the required privileges of a service.
qc————–Queries the configuration information for a service.
qdescription—-Queries the description for a service.
qfailure——–Queries the actions taken by a service upon failure.
qfailureflag—-Queries the failure actions flag of a service.
qsidtype——–Queries the service SID type of a service.
qprivs———-Queries the required privileges of a service.
delete———-Deletes a service (from the registry).
create———-Creates a service. (adds it to the registry).
control———Sends a control to a service.
sdshow———-Displays a service’s security descriptor.
sdset———–Sets a service’s security descriptor.
showsid———Displays the service SID string corresponding to an ar
bitrary name.
GetDisplayName–Gets the DisplayName for a service.
GetKeyName——Gets the ServiceKeyName for a service.
EnumDepend——Enumerates Service Dependencies.

The following commands don’t require a service name:
sc <server> <command> <option>
boot————(ok | bad) Indicates whether the last boot should
be saved as the last-known-good boot configuration
Lock————Locks the Service Database
QueryLock——-Queries the LockStatus for the SCManager Database
EXAMPLE:
sc start MyService

Would you like to see help for the QUERY and QUERYEX commands? [ y | n ]: