How to check the start type of a windows service is "auto" or "auto-delayed" using Powershell 5 in windows server 2012

Question

During maintenance, before I stop a Windows service, I need set its start type to Manual. Later I need switch it back to its original start type. So I need know the start type before I stop a service.

In Windows 10, I know there is a property called "DelayedAutoStart", but it seems not available in Windows Server 2012. How can I get the start type of a service in Powershell?

I am using Powershell 5.1 on Windows Server 2012.

Answer 1

Here is a good post with a few approaches to handle the DelayedAutoStart property of a Windows service.

For your version of PowerShell, you're best off utilizing sc.exe.

Querying service start type

You can query for a services start type using sc.exebut the information is returned as text, not PowerShell objects so you have to do some text manipulation. I hacked together a quick one-liner that can get the start type for a service given a name.

sc.exe qc "SERVICE_NAME" | Select-String "START_TYPE" | ForEach-Object { ($_ -replace '\s+', ' ').trim().Split(" ") | Select-Object -Last 1 }

Here is an example where I utilize it in conjunction with a loop to get the state of every service on the machine.

foreach($Service in (Get-Service)) {
    Write-Host "$($Service.ServiceName)"
    sc.exe qc "$($Service.ServiceName)" | Select-String "START_TYPE" | ForEach-Object { ($_ -replace '\s+', ' ').trim().Split(" ") | Select-Object -Last 1 } 
}

Setting service start type

You can set the start type of a service doing something similar to the following...

sc.exe config NameOfTheService start= delayed-auto

or wrapping sc.exe in PowerShell...

$myArgs = 'config "{0}" start=delayed-auto' -f 'TheServiceName'
Start-Process -FilePath sc.exe -ArgumentList $myArgs

As of PowerShell 6.0, they've added the support for AutomaticDelayedStart, however since you're using PowerShell 5.1 this doesn't apply (but it may for other readers).

Set-Service -Name "Testservice" –StartupType "AutomaticDelayedStart"