Professional Software for Windows Services / 24×7 OperationMyFolders Rated “Top Freeware” by Computer! Totaal Magazine We are pleased to announce that Dutch monthly magazine Computer! Totaal has ranked MyFolders as one of their “Top 15 freeware tips” in the January 2014 issue! Our convenient, intuitive utility that will save you time when working with your favorite folders came in at #12. Essential Tools for Windows Services: Process ExplorerIf you want to understand what’s really going on with the programs on your computer, then look no further than Microsoft’s excellent (and free) Process Explorer. Think of it as the “Task Manager on steroids”, with the ability to show all processes, threads, handles, and of course, Windows Services running on your PC. When launched, Process Explorer shows a colorful tree of all the active processes. The interface automatically refreshes itself every few seconds to highlight processes as they come and go. All Windows Services run under the wninit.exe > services.exe branch:
Double-clicking an entry allows you to dig into a specific process. For example, here is what is shown for spoolsv.exe, the Windows Print Spooler:
You can start, stop, restart or even change the permissions of the Spooler service from the Services tab:
Back on Process Explorer’s main screen, summon the Lower Pane (View > Show Lower Pane) for some serious detective work. You can review all DLLs loaded, or even better, see all the files, registry keys and other objects locked by a process by viewing Handles for the lower pane (View > Lower Pane View > Handles). Here we see that iTunes (being run as a service with AlwaysUp) is using the “counters.dat” file:
And perhaps most useful of all, Process Explorer can help you track down which application is preventing you from deleting a file or folder! Choose Find > Find Handle or DLL… and search for the file by name. Here we can see that the counters.dat file used by iTunes is also being held by Explorer and QuickBooks:
Process Explorer has many other interesting features. Easily terminate any process (and all its sup-processes if necessary), boost the priority of any process to make it run faster, and much more. Enjoy! Posted in Windows Services Tagged essential-tools, process-explorer, windows-services Leave a comment Phasing out Support for Windows XP Support for Windows XP will end on April 8, 2014. After this date, Microsoft has announced that it will will no longer provide updates for its 12-year old operating system — even though it still commands a whopping 29% share of all desktops, second only to Windows 7’s 48%. However, facing the reality of a potential security disaster, with viruses running unchecked without the usual defensive patches, Microsoft recently relaxed their stance and extended antimalware support of XP for an extra 15 months. Here at Core Technologies, we will start to phase out support for Windows XP this year too. We’re not planning on removing any XP-specific features and capabilities from our software, but our team will no longer be testing or certifying new software releases on XP. Will this cause you any problems? Please let us know! Essential Tools for Windows Services: The NET CommandIf you manage Windows Services and are comfortable working from the command line, then the Windows NET.EXE command should be in your toolkit. Use it to easily start, stop, pause or restart any service from an elevated command prompt, or in a convenient script/batch file. Using NET to stop a Windows ServiceTo stop a service, run:
where <Service-Name> is the name of the service. Be sure to enclose it in quotes if it contains a space! For example, to stop the Print Spooler service (named “Spooler”), run:
Here is what it looks like on our Windows Server 2016 computer: Notice that the NET command will wait for the service to stop before continuing. The only exception is when the service is unresponsive or takes more than 30 seconds to comply. Starting a Windows Service with NETTo start an idle Windows Service, run:
If all goes well, your service (and any other service it depends on to operate) will be started after a few seconds: How to Restart a Windows Service with NET.EXETo restart a service, say from a batch file, chain the “net stop” and “net start” commands together like this:
NET will also Pause and Resume Windows ServicesNot all services support pause and resume, but if you have one that does, NET can come in handy there as well. To pause a service, type:
To resume a paused service, run:
AlwaysUp Wins “Best Windows Utility” Award from Windows IT Pro Magazine
According to Windows IT Pro, the 2013 Community Choice Awards represent the cream of the crop in the various markets the magazine covers. Jason Bovberg, the magazine’s senior editor, reported:
A big “thank you” to everyone who voted for us! |
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