The Start-Service cmdlet sends a start message to the Windows Service Controller for each of the specified services. If a service is already running, the message is ignored without error. You can specify the services by their service names or display names, or you can use the InputObject parameter to supply a service object representing the services that you want to start.

-DisplayName <string[]>

-Exclude <string[]>

-Include <string[]>

-InputObject <ServiceController[]>

-Name <string[]>

-PassThru

-Confirm

-WhatIf

<CommonParameters>

The input type is the type of the objects that you can pipe to the cmdlet. The return type is the type of the objects that the cmdlet returns.

You can also refer to Start-Service by its built-in alias, "sasv". For more information, see about_Aliases.

Start-Service can control services only when the current user has permission to do so. If a command does not work correctly, you might not have the required permissions.

To find the service names and display names of the services on your system, type "Get-Service". The service names appear in the Name column, and the display names appear in the DisplayName column.

You can start only the services that have a start type of "Manual" or "Automatic". You cannot start the services with a start type of "Disabled". If a Start-Service command fails with the message "Cannot start service <service-name> on computer," use a Get-WmiObject command to find the start type of the service and, if necessary, use a Set-Service command to change the start type of the service.

Some services, such as Performance Logs and Alerts (SysmonLog) stop automatically if they have no work to do. When Windows PowerShell starts a service that stops itself almost immediately, it displays the following message: "Service <display-name> start failed."

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C:\PS>start-service -name eventlog

Description

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This command starts the EventLog service on the local computer. It uses the Name parameter to identify the service by its service name.

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C:\PS>start-service -displayname *remote* -whatif

Description

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This command tells what would happen if you started the services with a display name that includes "remote". It uses the DisplayName parameter to specify the services by their display name instead of by their service name. And, it uses the WhatIf parameter to tell what would happen if the command were executed instead of executing the command.

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C:\PS>$s = get-service wmi C:\PS>start-service -InputObject $s -passthru | format-list >> services.txt

Description

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These commands start the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) service on the computer and add a record of the action to the services.txt file. The first command uses the Get-Service cmdlet to get an object representing the WMI service and store it in the $s variable.

The second command uses the Start-Service cmdlet to start the WMI service. It identifies the service by using the InputObject parameter to pass the $s variable containing the WMI service object to Start-Service. Then, it uses the PassThru parameter to create an object that represents the starting of the service. Without this parameter, Start-Service does not create any output.

The pipeline operator (|) passes the object that Start-Service creates to the Format-List cmdlet, which formats the object as a list of its properties. The append redirection operator (>>) redirects the output to the services.txt file, where it is added to the end of the existing file.

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C:\PS># start-service

Description

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This series of commands shows how to start a service when the start type of the service is "Disabled". The first command, which uses the Start-Service cmdlet to start the Telnet service (tlntsvr), fails.

C:\PS>start-service tlntsvr

Start-Service : Service 'Telnet (TlntSvr)' cannot be started due to the following error: Cannot start service TlntSvr on computer '.'.

At line:1 char:14

+ start-service <<<< tlntsvr

The second command uses the Get-WmiObject cmdlet to get the Tlntsvr service. This command retrieves an object with the start type property in the StartMode field. The resulting display reveals that the start type of the Tlntsvr service is "Disabled".

C:\PS> get-wmiobject win32_service | where-object {$_.Name -eq "tlntsvr"}

ExitCode : 0

Name : TlntSvr

ProcessId : 0

StartMode : Disabled

State : Stopped

Status : OK

The next command uses the Set-Service cmdlet to change the start type of the Tlntsvr service to "Manual".

C:\PS> set-service tlntsvr -startuptype manual

Now, we can resubmit the Start-Service command. This time, the command succeeds.

C:\PS> start-service tlntsvr

To verify that the command succeeded, use Get-Service.

Concepts