Managing Services Using Task Manager

A Services tab was added to Task Manager in Windows Vista and is still available in Windows 7. This tab allows you to:

• View the name, Process Identifier (PID), description (which is actually the service's friendly name), status (running or stopped), and service group for all services running on the system.
• Stop or start a service by right-clicking it and then selecting the appropriate option.
• View the process within which a service is running by right-clicking the service and then selecting Go To Process.

Note To view the process associated with a service, you should first click the Show Processes From All Users button on the Processes tab. This is a necessary step because many services run within an SvcHost.exe process to reduce the memory footprint that would result if each service ran separately. After processes for all users are displayed on the Processes tab, right-click a service that has a PID number on the Services tab and then select Go To Process. The focus will switch to the Processes tab and highlight the SvcHost.exe process used to host that particular service.

Managing Services Using Group Policy

You can use Group Policy to configure the startup state (Automatic, Manual, or Disabled) and ACLs for services in the same way that you do this on previous versions of Windows. A policy setting for each system service on a computer can be found under the following node:

Computer Configuration\Policies\Windows Settings\Security Settings\System Services