Understanding Services

Services are long-running applications that run in the background, typically start up on boot, and run independently of users who log on. Services handle low-level tasks such as managing authentication and networking and other tasks that need little or no user interaction to function. Third-party services, such as firewalls and antivirus software, can also run on Windows.

Services are implemented using the Services API and are managed by the Service Control Manager (SCM). SCM maintains a database of information concerning the services installed on the system and exposes these services to management using both UI and command-line tools. Using these tools, administrators can:

• Configure a service to start automatically on system startup, to start the service manually on demand, or to disable the service.
• Start, stop, pause, and resume a service (depending on whether it is currently running).
• Specify a security context under which the service runs-typically one of the following: LocalSystem; a lower-privileged identity such as LocalService or NetworkService; or a custom user account created specifically for the service.
• Specify recovery actions to be taken when the service fails.
• View the dependencies of a service on other services.