Skip to main content

​
Stop a Service in Windows

Windows services are typically configured to restart automatically on failure. This guide shows how to stop a service and prevent it from restarting, using multipassd as the example.
To permanently disable a service from starting at all, run:
sc config "[ServiceName]" start= disabled

​
Method 1: Services Management Console (GUI)

1
Open the Services console
2
Press Windows Key + R, type services.msc, and press Enter.
3
Find and open the service properties
4
Scroll down to find Multipass Service (or multipassd), right-click it, and select Properties.
5
Disable automatic restart on failure
6
Go to the Recovery tab. Change the actions for First failure, Second failure, and Subsequent failures to Take No Action.
7
Apply and stop
8
Click Apply, then OK. You can then stop the service immediately:
9
sc stop "Multipass Service"

​
Method 2: Command Prompt (Administrator)

1
Open an elevated Command Prompt
2
Search for cmd, right-click, and select Run as administrator.
3
Stop the running service
4
sc stop "Multipass Service"
5
Configure failure actions to take no action
6
sc failure "Multipass Service" reset= 0 actions=
7
  • reset= 0 — resets the failure count after 0 seconds (note the space before 0 is required by sc).
  • actions= — specifies no action to take on failures (empty value means no action).
8
Confirm the service is stopped
9
sc stop "Multipass Service"
10
The changes take effect the next time the service is started — either manually or after a system reboot.

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get started for freeTalk to us