Manually uninstall a Windows service

[Hexonx]

For various reasons, installutil.exe can experience errors when uninstalling a Windows service based on a .NET assembly and the service never gets uninstalled. I ran across this problem recently (for the nth time!) and I wanted to post my findings.

To uninstall the service, simply delete the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MySvc

where "MySvc" is the name of the service to uninstall. After that, reboot and all should be well.

Note: If you search the registry, you may find the key listed under other sections, such as "ControlSet001". I left these alone and only deleted the key under CurrentControlSet.

 

[karroush]

Hi Hexonx,

I found another way to stop and uninstall windows service, first you try to uninstall it using the installutil.exe, if it fails, simply do the following:
1] go to your Visual Studio.NET environment
2] from the Tools menu, choose "Debug Processes"
3] locate your windows service and choose "attach"
4] select the attached windows service from the bottom list and choose "Terminate"

doing the previous you do not need to restart your pc.

Note: in your way, just try using installutil.exe -u for your service, if it fails, just restart your computer without deleting anything from the registry, you will see that the service is removed when the windows starts again