How to Delete a Windows Service in Windows 7, Vista Or XP

How to Delete a Windows Service in Windows 7, Vista or XP

With Windows Vista/7 and Windows Server 2008 and higher operating systems, sometimes there is a need to delete the FMAudit Service.

Important Note: Use with caution making sure that the service name being deleted is correct.

Deleting a Service

The first thing you’ll need to do is identify the name of the service, so open up Services through the start menu or control panel, and then find the service in the list that you want to delete. The screen displayed below is generated by:

1. Press the Start Button

2. In the Search Bar enter services.msc and hit the enter Key

Note: The listing is in alphabetical order, please find the service named: FMAudit

You’ll want to open up the properties by double-clicking on the FMAudit service name, and then highlight the “Service name” value and copy it to the clipboard. This is what we’ll need to disable it.

You’ll need to open up a command prompt, and if you are using Windows 7 or Vista you’ll need to right-click the command prompt and choose Run as Administrator. We’ll use the sc command to actually do the work.

The syntax used to delete a service is this:

sc delete ServiceName

If your service name has spaces in it, you’ll need to wrap the service name in quotes, like this:

sc delete “Adobe LM Service”

Note that I’m not recommending deleting this particular service, it’s just an example.

Now if you use the F5 key to refresh your Services list, you’ll see that the service is gone.

I’ve found that using this technique (carefully) can make your Services list a lot more useful, since you don’t have to weed through dozens of items you will never have enabled.