Start Services. Click the Start button, type services.msc in the search field and hit return.
From the Action menu, select Export List:
Choose the format (tab delimited text or CSV), enter a file name and click Save to create the file.
Your file will contain the following five columns of data, which you cannot customize:
Name (Note: This is the service’s display name, not its unique name used by Windows)
Description
Status
Startup Type
Log On As
If that’s all you need then you’re good to go!
2. Export to CSV or XML with PowerShell
Even though it’s easy to do, exporting with the Services application may not provide all the information you would like to capture. For example, the service name is not included and neither is the command line used to start the service.
If you’d like more columns, then PowerShell is another option.
For example, this command lists all the services on your machine:
Note that you can add or remove properties from the Select-Object section as you see fit. Feel free to include any property listed in the Win32_Service class documentation.
And once you’ve settled on a command that prints the necessary information, call the Export-CSV module at the end to send the results to a file.
For example, this command exports the list of services to “C:\output-file.csv”:
We created Windows Service Auditor to help protect against changes to your important Windows Services but it has the ability to export the list of services to an XML file as well.
After downloading and starting Windows Service Auditor, simply select Export (XML} from the All Services menu to create the XML file:
The XML will be very detailed, with all aspects of your Windows Services recorded. Here is an example:
Because its output is so detailed, Windows Service Auditor is your best option if your goal is to take a snapshot of your services and all their settings.
Hopefully one of these three methods works for you!
Hi. I think I’ve written a batch file that your AlwaysUp software cannot run as a service.
Here are the contents of my file:
@echo off > usermessage.vbs ECHO Set wshShell = CreateObject( “WScript.Shell” ) >>usermessage.vbs ECHO wshShell.Popup “My Text line 1” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 2” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 3” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 4” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 5” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 6” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 7” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 8” ^& vbCrLf ^& _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Text line 9”, 120, _ >>usermessage.vbs ECHO “My Window Title”, 64 WSCRIPT.EXE usermessage.vbs DEL usermessage.vbs
I searched the internet for hours using various terms and finally found a suggestion that your software would solve my problem.
It runs perfectly if I just click on it. But I could not make it run as a service. I’m not a pro at this.
Any Ideas?
— John
Hi John. Thanks for trying AlwaysUp and for getting in touch.
What’s the batch file doing?
We’re not VBScript experts so it took us a while to understand what your batch file is doing!
However, it soon became clear that the batch file:
Constructs a VBScript file named usermessage.vbs on the fly.
Adds a line to usermessage.vbs to create a Windows Script shell object.
Adds lines to usermessage.vbs that call the Popup function with several lines of text.
Runs usermessage.vbs, which shows a popup window with the specified text. The popup will stay on screen for up to 120 seconds, or until the user clicks the OK button.
Deletes the usermessage.vbs file.
In summary, the purpose of the batch file is to show this message box for up to 2 minutes:
It seems a bit contrived, but perhaps this code is a sample you created for testing? No doubt your “real” code is more practical and exciting. 🙂
AlwaysUp runs your batch file properly
AlwaysUp launches the batch file as a Windows Service just fine. And it has no problem running the dynamically created VBScript file either. We’re lucky to have hundreds of customers using AlwaysUp to launch their batch files, every day.
Indeed, we were able to setup your batch file in AlwaysUp and confirm that it runs as expected. Process Explorer showed AlwaysUp running the batch file, which launched the Windows Script Host executable (wscript.exe) to display the popup window. You can see this arrangement in the tree of processes on the left:
All good, right? Well, not entirely…
Session 0 Isolation prevents you from seeing the popup window
Even though your script is running, you will not be able to see the popup window on your desktop. That is because of Session 0 Isolation — an important security measure that constrains Windows Services.
You won’t see the popup because:
your batch file is running in Session 0, on the special background desktop where all Windows Services operate, and
Windows isolates applications running in Session 0, meaning that they cannot show up alongside the other windows on your screen.
Once upon a time, you were be able to switch to Session 0 to see the popup but no longer. Unfortunately, Microsoft removed that capability a few years ago. As a result, there is no way to see a window displayed in Session 0.
So in summary, your batch file will not pop up a window on your interactive desktop when you run it as a Windows Service. And that’s true even if you don’t use AlwaysUp because the restriction is built into Windows itself.
I hope this makes sense. Unfortunately, Session 0 Isolation can be tricky to comprehend. Please check out these FAQ entries if you want to dig into the details (caveat emptor):
For a few years now, our company has been using AlwaysUp to run an internally developed C# console application as a service. The application checks a folder for incoming files and processes anything it finds. It runs every 30 seconds.
The application itself works fine. New files are discovered quickly and we have a system that works reliably 24/7.
The only problem is that we’re seeing hundreds of errors in the activity report:
Have you ever had this reported before? Can you recommend some ways to help us avoid the errors?
— Clayton
Hi Clayton. Thanks for supporting our software!
By default, AlwaysUp’s mission is to run your application 24/7 — with no interruptions.
However, your program runs periodically. That’s perfectly fine, but you should make a couple of tweaks to have AlwaysUp tolerate the frequent stops and starts.
Tweak #1: Minimize the logging around expected starts & stops
First, understand that AlwaysUp is a chatty babysitter. 🙂
Whenever the application it’s watching starts or stops, AlwaysUp writes an informative entry to the Windows Event Log.
For example, you will see one of these messages when AlwaysUp starts (or restarts) your C# program:
The application has been started
The application has been restarted (run #number)
And AlwaysUp writes similar entries when the application crashes or stops for any reason.
For customers running applications continuously — like Dropbox, OneDrive or VirtualBox — those messages are helpful. They highlight the rare occasions where the application runs into trouble and needs attention.
But your scenario is different. AlwaysUp launches your application every 30 seconds. As a result, AlwaysUp will inundate your activity log with useless messages.
Fortunately, our team has already designed an easy way to eliminate the spurious log entries. Please:
Edit your application in AlwaysUp
Move to the Restart tab
Check the Minimize event logging as the application starts & stops box:
Save your changes.
That adjustment will prevent AlwaysUp from filling up your event logs. Restart your C# application and you will notice that the activity report is much less verbose.
Tweak #2: Make AlwaysUp tolerate “quick exits”
From the detailed logs you sent, each of the three runs completed in less than 1 second. That’s very fast, and the quick turnaround confuses AlwaysUp.
In fact, because your C# application does its work and exits so quickly, AlwaysUp thinks that your application failed to start at all!
And with that conclusion, AlwaysUp immediately runs your program again.
The result is the cycle you see in your logs — the repeated, rapid fire running of your console application.
The solution to the problem is to tell AlwaysUp to not to panic if your application completes quickly. To do so:
Create an empty file called alwaysup-dont-panic-on-quick-exit.txt in your AlwaysUp installation directory (likely C:\Program Files (x86)\AlwaysUp):
Restart your application in AlwaysUp.
The presence of that “magic” file signals AlwaysUp to tolerate your application’s speedy exit and avoids the unnecessary restarts.
The Security Center service is an important “watchdog” focused on protecting your computer.
From the service’s description:
The Security Center service monitors and reports security health settings on the computer.
Those health settings include:
Firewall (on/off)
Antivirus (on/off/out of date)
Antispyware (on/off/out of date)
Windows Update (automatically/manually download and install updates)
User Account Control (on/off)
Internet settings (recommended/not recommended)
In summary, Security Center’s purpose is to let you know when your computer’s defenses are down.
To illustrate how the service works, we turned off the Windows Firewall (which protects your PC from outside attackers). A couple of seconds later, Security Center raised a warning on our desktop, urging us to re-enable the firewall:
Technical information
The service’s name is wscsvc. It runs inside the shared services host process, svchost.exe:
The service’s startup type is Automatic (Delayed Start). As a result, Windows launches the service a couple of minutes after your machine boots.
Since Security Center safeguards your machine, stopping the service may leave you in the dark about your computer’s defenses. For that reason, Microsoft has made it very difficult for you to stop the Security Center service.
In fact, not even members of the powerful Administrators group can stop (or change) the service! If you open the Services application, you will notice that all the command buttons are disabled:
In our research, we identified only three obscure, built-in Windows accounts that have enough rights to stop Security Center. Those accounts are DcomLaunch, SecurityHealthService and TrustedInstaller:
Clearly, Microsoft has taken great pains to “lock down” the Security Center service. Best to heed their advice; do not try to stop it.
Is it OK to disable the Security Center service?
Again, because of tight security settings, you will not be able to disable the service from the Services application. And the SC command won’t work either:
However, if you are hell bent on hobbling the service, you can try hacking the registry. Setting the Start value in the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wscsvc key to 4 should do the trick. You may have to reboot afterwards.
But don’t be surprised if that fails too. For example, Windows 11 restricts access to the registry key to a few built-in accounts. Not even an administrator can update the registry entry. And as you can see, Windows rebuffed our attempt to change the registry value:
If you would like to know more about the Security Center service — or if you have a specific problem with it — please feel free to get in touch. We will do our best to help you!
(888) 881-CORE
Hi. I think I’ve written a batch file that your 
For a few years now, our company has been using AlwaysUp to run an internally developed 
