stop or start a service on remote machine

Question

I created a script that will start or stop a service based on it\'s display name. My script works on the local machine but I would like to make sure that it can be done on a

Answer 1

You can't use Start-Service/Stop-Service for a remote computer, you can however pass a service object from Get-Service (using the ComputerName parameter) to Set-Service which can perform the same start/stop actions for a remote computer:

Get-Service $ServiceName -ComputerName $ComputerName | Set-Service -Status Running

I find this to be much easier than using PowerShell Remoting or WMI commands.

You can easily update your code with minimal code changes:

$serviceName = Read-Host -Prompt 'Please enter service name: '

#get computername or use localhost for local computer
if(($ComputerName = Read-Host 'Enter Computer Name, leave blank for local computer') -eq ''){$ComputerName = 'localhost'}

$Service = Get-Service -DisplayName $serviceName -ComputerName $ComputerName -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue

# Check that service name exists
if ($Service) {
    # Check that service name is not empty
    if([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($serviceName)){Write-Host 'Service name is NULL or EMPTY'}
    else {    
        $Choice =  Read-Host -Prompt 'Would you like to start or stop the service'

        #Start service
        If ($Choice -eq 'start') {
            $Service | Set-Service -Status Running
            Write-Host $serviceName 'Starting...' -ForegroundColor Green
        }

        #Stop service
        If ($Choice -eq 'stop') {
          $Service | Set-Service -Status Stopped
          Write-Host $serviceName 'Stopping...' -ForegroundColor Green
        }
    }
}
else {            
    Write-Host 'Service name does not exist'            
}