How can I delete a service in Windows?
Use the SC command, like this (you need to be on a command prompt to execute the commands in this post):
SC STOP shortservicename
SC DELETE shortservicename
Note: You need to run the command prompt as an administrator, not just logged in as the administrator, but also with administrative rights. If you get errors above about not having the necessary access rights to stop and/or delete the service, run the command prompt as an administrator. You can do this by searching for the command prompt on your start menu and then right-clicking and selecting "Run as administrator". Note to PowerShell users: sc is aliased to set-content. So sc delete service will actually create a file called delete with the content service. To do this in Powershell, use sc.exe delete service instead
If you need to find the short service name of a service, use the following command to generate a text file containing a list of services and their statuses:
SC QUERY state= all >"C:\Service List.txt"
For a more concise list, execute this command:
SC QUERY state= all | FIND "_NAME"
The short service name will be listed just above the display name, like this:
SERVICE_NAME: MyService
DISPLAY_NAME: My Special Service
And thus to delete that service:
SC STOP MyService
SC DELETE MyService
Click Start | Run and type regedit in the Open: line. Click OK.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
Scroll down the left pane, locate the service name, right click it and select Delete.
Reboot the system.
Use services.msc or (Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services) to find the service in question. Double-click to see the service name and the path to the executable.
Check the exe version information for a clue as to the owner of the service, and use Add/Remove programs to do a clean uninstall if possible.
Failing that, from the command prompt:
sc stop servicexyz
sc delete servicexyz
No restart should be required.
As described above I executed:
sc delete ServiceName
However this didn't work as I was executing it from PowerShell.
When using PowerShell you must specify the full path to sc.exe because PowerShell has a default alias for sc assigning it to Set-Content. Since it's a valid command it doesn't actually show an error message.
To resolve this I executed it as follows:
C:\Windows\System32\sc.exe delete ServiceName