How to test whether a service is running from the command line

Question

I would like to be able to query whether or not a service is running from a windows batch file. I know I can use:

sc query \"ServiceName\"

Answer 1

if you don't mind to combine the net command with grep you can use the following script.

@echo off
net start | grep -x "Service"
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 2 goto trouble
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto stopped
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto started
echo unknown status
goto end
:trouble
echo trouble
goto end
:started
echo started
goto end
:stopped
echo stopped
goto end
:end

Answer 2

I noticed no one mentioned the use of regular expressions when using find/findstr-based Answers. That can be problematic for similarly named services.

Lets say you have two services, CDPUserSvc and CDPUserSvc_54530

If you use most of the find/findstr-based Answers here so far, you'll get false-positives for CDPUserSvc queries when only CDPUserSvc_54530 is running.

The /r and /c switches for findstr can help us handle that use-case, as well as the special character that indicates the end of the line, $

This query will only verify the running of the CDPUserSvc service and ignore CDPUserSvc_54530

sc query|findstr /r /c:"CDPUserSvc$"

Answer 3

sc query "ServiceName" | find "RUNNING"

Answer 4

Thinking a little bit outside the box here I'm going to propose that powershell may be an answer on up-to-date XP/2003 machines and certainly on Vista/2008 and newer (instead of .bat/.cmd). Anyone who has some Perl in their background should feel at-home pretty quickly.

$serviceName = "ServiceName";
$serviceStatus = (get-service "$serviceName").Status;

if ($serviceStatus -eq "Running") {
    echo "Service is Running";
}
else {
    #Could be Stopped, Stopping, Paused, or even Starting...
    echo "Service is $serviceStatus";
}

Another way, if you have significant investment in batch is to run the PS script as a one-liner, returning an exit code.

@ECHO off
SET PS=powershell -nologo -command
%PS% "& {if((get-service SvcName).Status -eq 'Running'){exit 1}}"

ECHO.%ERRORLEVEL%

Running as a one-liner also gets around the default PS code signing policy at the expense of messiness. To put the PS commands in a .ps1 file and run like powershell myCode.ps1 you may find signing your powershell scripts is neccessary to run them in an automated way (depends on your environment). See http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SigningPowerShellScripts.aspx for details

Answer 5

@ECHO OFF
REM testing at cmd : sc query "MSSQLSERVER" | findstr RUNNING
REM "MSSQLSERVER" is the name of Service for sample
sc query "MSSQLSERVER" %1 | findstr RUNNING
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 2 goto trouble
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto stopped
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto started
echo unknown status
goto end
:trouble
echo Oh noooo.. trouble mas bro
goto end
:started
echo "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)" is started
goto end
:stopped
echo "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)" is stopped
echo Starting service
net start "MSSQLSERVER"
goto end
:erro
echo Error please check your command.. mas bro 
goto end

:end

Answer 6

sc query "servicename" | findstr STATE

for example:

sc query "wuauserv" | findstr STATE

To report what the Windows update service is doing, running/paused etc.
This is also for Windows 10. Thank me later.