I came across this one liner that appears to work:
stop-service -inputobject $(get-service -ComputerName remotePC -Name Spooler)
Can anyone explain why, because I thought stop-service didn't work unless you either used remoting or it occurred on the local host.
The output of Get-Service is a System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController .NET class that can operate on remote computers. How it accomplishes that, I don't know - probably DCOM or WMI. Once you've gotten one of these from Get-Service, it can be passed into Stop-Service which most likely just calls the Stop() method on this object. That stops the service on the remote machine. In fact, you could probably do this as well:
(get-service -ComputerName remotePC -Name Spooler).Stop()
Thanks to everyone's contributions to this question, I've come up with the following script. Change the values for $SvcName and $SvrName to suit your needs. This script will start the remote service if it is stopped, or stop it if it is started. And it uses the cool .WaitForStatus method to wait while the service responds.
#Change this values to suit your needs:
$SvcName = 'Spooler'
$SvrName = 'remotePC'
#Initialize variables:
[string]$WaitForIt = ""
[string]$Verb = ""
[string]$Result = "FAILED"
$svc = (get-service -computername $SvrName -name $SvcName)
Write-host "$SvcName on $SvrName is $($svc.status)"
Switch ($svc.status) {
'Stopped' {
Write-host "Starting $SvcName..."
$Verb = "start"
$WaitForIt = 'Running'
$svc.Start()}
'Running' {
Write-host "Stopping $SvcName..."
$Verb = "stop"
$WaitForIt = 'Stopped'
$svc.Stop()}
Default {
Write-host "$SvcName is $($svc.status). Taking no action."}
}
if ($WaitForIt -ne "") {
Try { # For some reason, we cannot use -ErrorAction after the next statement:
$svc.WaitForStatus($WaitForIt,'00:02:00')
} Catch {
Write-host "After waiting for 2 minutes, $SvcName failed to $Verb."
}
$svc = (get-service -computername $SvrName -name $SvcName)
if ($svc.status -eq $WaitForIt) {$Result = 'SUCCESS'}
Write-host "$Result`: $SvcName on $SvrName is $($svc.status)"
}
Of course, the account you run this under will need the proper privileges to access the remote computer and start and stop services. And when executing this against older remote machines, you might first have to install WinRM 3.0 on the older machine.
Based on the built-in Powershell examples, this is what Microsoft suggests. Tested and verified:
To stop:
(Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -filter "name='IPEventWatcher'" -ComputerName Server01).StopService()
To start:
(Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -filter "name='IPEventWatcher'" -ComputerName Server01).StartService()
This worked for me, but I used it as start. powershell outputs, waiting for service to finshing starting a few times then finishes and then a get-service on the remote server shows the service started.
**start**-service -inputobject $(get-service -ComputerName remotePC -Name Spooler)
Another option; use invoke-command:
cls
$cred = Get-Credential
$server = 'MyRemoteComputer'
$service = 'My Service Name'
invoke-command -Credential $cred -ComputerName $server -ScriptBlock {
param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$True,Position=0)]
[string]$service
)
stop-service $service
} -ArgumentList $service
NB: to use this option you'll need PowerShell to be installed on the remote machine and for the firewall to allow requests through, and for the Windows Remote Management service to be running on the target machine. You can configure the firewall by running the following script directly on the target machine (one off task): Enable-PSRemoting -force.
You can also do (Get-Service -Name "what ever" - ComputerName RemoteHost).Status = "Stopped"
You could just run a foreach and have logging enabled. The console will show if something goes wrong and you can look in the log.
That way, you can then handle the errors individually.
I think it works better this way than running a Test-Netconnection for the verification part because firewall rules can create the value false.
For this example you ned a csv file with column ServerName, Populate the column with servername.contoso.com
$ServerList = "$PSScriptRoot\Serverlist.csv"
$Transcriptlog = "$PSScriptRoot\Transcipt.txt"
Start-Transcript -Path $Transcriptlog -Force
Get-Date -Format "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm"
Try
{ # Start Try
$ImportServerList = Import-Csv $ServerList -Encoding UTF8 | ForEach-Object { # Start Foreach
New-Object PsObject -Prop @{ # Start New-Object
ServerName = $_.ServerName } # End NewObject
Invoke-Command -ComputerName $_.ServerName -ErrorAction Continue -ScriptBlock { # Start ScriptBlock
# Disable Service PrintSpooler
Get-Service -Name Spooler | Stop-Service -Force
} # End ScriptBlock
} # End Foreach
} # End Try
Catch
{ # Start Catch
Write-Warning -Message "## ERROR## "
Write-Warning -Message "## Script could not start ## "
Write-Warning $Error[0]
} # End Catch
Stop-Transcript
As far as I know, and I cant verify it now, you cannot stop remote services with the Stop-Service cmdlet or with .Net, it is not supported.
Yes it works, but it stopes the service on your local machine, not on the remote computer.
Now, if the above is correct, without remoting or wmi enabled, you could set a scheduled job on the remote system, using AT, that runs Stop-Service locally.
