How to test whether a service is running from the command line - windows

Question

I would like to be able to query whether or not a service is running from a windows batch file. I know I can use:
sc query "ServiceName"
but, this dumps out some text. What I really want is for it to set the errorlevel environment variable so that I can take action on that.
Do you know a simple way I can do this?
UPDATE
Thanks for the answers so far. I'm worried the solutions that parse the text may not work on non English operating systems. Does anybody know a way around this, or am I going to have to bite the bullet and write a console program to get this right.

Answer 1

sc query "ServiceName" | find "RUNNING"

Answer 2

Let's go back to the old school of batch programing on windows
net start | find "Service Name"
This will work everywhere...

Answer 3

if you don't mind to combine the net command with grep you can use the following script.
#echo off
net start | grep -x "Service"
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 2 goto trouble
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto stopped
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto started
echo unknown status
goto end
:trouble
echo trouble
goto end
:started
echo started
goto end
:stopped
echo stopped
goto end
:end

Answer 4

You could use wmic with the /locale option
call wmic /locale:ms_409 service where (name="wsearch") get state /value | findstr State=Running
if %ErrorLevel% EQU 0 (
echo Running
) else (
echo Not running
)

Answer 5

Thinking a little bit outside the box here I'm going to propose that powershell may be an answer on up-to-date XP/2003 machines and certainly on Vista/2008 and newer (instead of .bat/.cmd). Anyone who has some Perl in their background should feel at-home pretty quickly.
$serviceName = "ServiceName";
$serviceStatus = (get-service "$serviceName").Status;
if ($serviceStatus -eq "Running") {
echo "Service is Running";
}
else {
#Could be Stopped, Stopping, Paused, or even Starting...
echo "Service is $serviceStatus";
}
Another way, if you have significant investment in batch is to run the PS script as a one-liner, returning an exit code.
#ECHO off
SET PS=powershell -nologo -command
%PS% "& {if((get-service SvcName).Status -eq 'Running'){exit 1}}"
ECHO.%ERRORLEVEL%
Running as a one-liner also gets around the default PS code signing policy at the expense of messiness. To put the PS commands in a .ps1 file and run like powershell myCode.ps1 you may find signing your powershell scripts is neccessary to run them in an automated way (depends on your environment). See http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SigningPowerShellScripts.aspx for details

Answer 6

#ECHO OFF
REM testing at cmd : sc query "MSSQLSERVER" | findstr RUNNING
REM "MSSQLSERVER" is the name of Service for sample
sc query "MSSQLSERVER" %1 | findstr RUNNING
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 2 goto trouble
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto stopped
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto started
echo unknown status
goto end
:trouble
echo Oh noooo.. trouble mas bro
goto end
:started
echo "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)" is started
goto end
:stopped
echo "SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)" is stopped
echo Starting service
net start "MSSQLSERVER"
goto end
:erro
echo Error please check your command.. mas bro
goto end
:end

Answer 7

I would suggest
WMIC Service WHERE "Name = 'SericeName'" GET Started
or WMIC Service WHERE "Name = 'ServiceName'" GET ProcessId (ProcessId will be zero if service isn't started)
You can set the error level based on whether the former returns "TRUE" or the latter returns nonzero

Answer 8

sc query "servicename" | findstr STATE
for example:
sc query "wuauserv" | findstr STATE
To report what the Windows update service is doing, running/paused etc.This is also for Windows 10. Thank me later.

Answer 9

Try
sc query state= all
for a list of services and whether they are running or not.

Answer 10

I've found this:
sc query "ServiceName" | findstr RUNNING
seems to do roughly the right thing. But, I'm worried that's not generalized enough to work on non-english operating systems.

Answer 11

Just to add on to the list if you are using Powershell.
sc.exe query "ServiceName" | findstr RUNNING
The command below does not work because sc is an alias to Set-Content within Powershell.
sc query "ServiceName" | findstr RUNNING
find also does not work on Powershell for some reason unknown to me.
sc.exe query "ServiceName" | find RUNNING

Answer 12

SERVICO.BAT
#echo off
echo Servico: %1
if "%1"=="" goto erro
sc query %1 | findstr RUNNING
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 2 goto trouble
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 goto stopped
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 goto started
echo unknown status
goto end
:trouble
echo trouble
goto end
:started
echo started
goto end
:stopped
echo stopped
goto end
:erro
echo sintaxe: servico NOMESERVICO
goto end
:end

Answer 13

I noticed no one mentioned the use of regular expressions when using find/findstr-based Answers. That can be problematic for similarly named services.
Lets say you have two services, CDPUserSvc and CDPUserSvc_54530
If you use most of the find/findstr-based Answers here so far, you'll get false-positives for CDPUserSvc queries when only CDPUserSvc_54530 is running.
The /r and /c switches for findstr can help us handle that use-case, as well as the special character that indicates the end of the line, $
This query will only verify the running of the CDPUserSvc service and ignore CDPUserSvc_54530
sc query|findstr /r /c:"CDPUserSvc$"

Answer 14

Use Cygwin Bash with:
sc query "SomeService" |grep -qo RUNNING && echo "SomeService is running." || echo "SomeService is not running!"
(Make sure you have sc.exe in your PATH.)

Answer 15

I have created one based from above but will show if the service is installed first then get whether it is running or not.
sc query "YourService" | find /i "failed" 2>&1>nul && echo.'YourService Not Installed' || (sc query "YourService"| find /i "running" 2>&1>nul && echo.Yes || echo.No)