How do you do a keyword search the Services.msc (mmc) window in Windows 7?

Posted by Warren P on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Warren P
Published on 2010-04-09T20:59:11Z Indexed on 2010/04/09 21:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 306

When you want to run a service, you have very limited capabilities, in all current Windows versions, as far as I can tell.

I usually start Services by typing "services.msc" into the Start->Run box, on most versions of Windows, this works. I know how to click the "Name" column in the MMC view of Windows Services. If you know what the first few characters of a service name is, you can usually sort by the name, and type the prefix to scroll the list down (find Windows Search for example).

This seems pretty weak to me, so I spent some time searching the interwebs for tools that do a better job of managing services. Usually I have a keyword that I know "fooWare" might be the keyword, and I need to find the (usually badly named) service and start it and stop it. This is often WAY too hard.

The best I could do is "NET SERVICES" from the command line, and maybe add a grep in there, but that doesn't list every service, only a few of them.

And the MMC snap-in in Win7 now has an Export List button, exporting to csv text file feature which I have used from time to time, to export and then search. I have thought of writing my own tool. I'm hoping a better "service manager" utility exists out there that sysadmins use. I'd like a search box at the top right corner, kind of the same way that the Add-Remove-Programs dialog in Win7 and Vista has a search facility.

Does such a services utility exist out there?

© Server Fault or respective owner

Related posts about Services

Related posts about windows-7