Most of the Services applet’s display area is taken up by the list box which has three columns called Services, Status, and Startup The Services column contains the display name of the service. This display name is not the actual name of the service or file, but you can use the search feature of the Registry Editor using this display name to find the actual service name and associated files. The Status column contains the current operating state of the service. The Status column displays the word Started if the service is running, appears blank if the service is stopped (or inactive), or displays Paused if the service has been paused. The Startup column displays Automatic, if the service has been configured to start up automatically at system startup; Manual, if the service has been configured to start up when the operator manually starts the service; or Disabled, if the service has been configured to not be started under any circumstances. You’ll learn more about how to configure the startup options in the next section, entitled “Specifying A Service’s Startup Options.”

Below the large list box containing the services, you’ll see the Startup Parameters edit box. You can use this edit box to pass command line arguments to the service when you manually start it. Which brings us to the most import components of the Services applet—the buttons on the far right. These eight buttons perform the following actions:

•  Close—Closes the Service applet.

•  Start—Starts a highlighted service. This button will be grayed out if the service is already running.

•  Stop—Stops a running service. This button will be grayed out if the service is already inactive (i.e., stopped).

•  Pause—Pauses a running service. This button will be grayed out if the service does not support pausing the service.

•  Continue—Restarts a paused service. This button will be grayed out if the service is already running and not paused.

•  Startup—Opens the Service dialog box. More on this in the next section entitled “Specifying A Service’s Startup Options.”

•  HW Profiles—Opens another version of the Services dialog box where you can enable or disable different hardware profiles. Hardware profiles are generally used only on portable computers. For example, you might have a network and non-network profile for when you are physically connected to the network and when you are operating the portable computer in a standalone fashion (i.e., not connected to the network).

•  Help—Provides basic information on how to use the Services applet.

Controlling a service using the Services applet is as easy as 1-2-3.

1.  Select the service to control in the list box.

2.  Click the Start button to start the service, the Stop button to Stop the service, the Pause button to pause the service, or the Continue button to continue a paused service.

3.  When you have finished controlling your services, click the Close button to close the Services applet.

Specifying A Service’s Startup Options

As previously mentioned, there are times when you might want to configure a service to change its startup values or use a different user account. This is easy enough to accomplish, but you should really understand what you are doing beforehand to avoid unwelcome surprises. For example, if you decided to disable the Server service so it would not start at system startup, you would also prevent the Workstation and Netlogon services from starting. The Workstation service would not be a great loss, because this service simply allows you to access shared network resources, but the Netlogon service would be a noticeable loss, because it is used to authenticate your user logons. If the Netlogon service is not running, this can prevent users from accessing shared network resources (if you only have one domain controller). You also would not be able to log on to the computer locally and fix the problem or shut down the server. To resolve the problem, you would have to reset the computer and then repair the registry using the Last Known Good option This could cause data corruption on your disk drive(s) as the OS will not be able to prepare itself for a normal shutdown. This is not good!