If you are a fan of tweaking your system and disabling services, you might find that over time your Windows Services list becomes large and unwieldy. It'southward easy enough to delete a Windows service using the Command Prompt.

RELATED: Should You Disable Windows Services to Speed Upward Your PC?

A large alert, though. When you delete a service, it's gone—and services tin be a existent pain to get back. We really don't recommend deleting services at all, unless you're dealing with a very particular situation like cleaning up after a programme uninstalled improperly or rooting out a malware infestation. Typically, but disabling a service is enough, especially if all you're really trying to do is tweak your organization performance (which probably won't work as well as you might hope, anyway).  That said, if you do need to delete a service, y'all just need to find the bodily name of that service and and so issue a unmarried command from the Command Prompt.

The techniques we're covering hither should work in pretty much any version of Windows—from XP all the way up through 10.

Step One: Find the Name of the Service You Desire to Delete

The first thing yous'll demand to do is identify the full proper name of the service yous want to delete. In our example, we're using the RetailDemo service—a curious thing that activates a subconscious control for changing Windows into a retail service style (and pretty much erasing all personal docs and resetting your PC to it's default state), so it'due south actually a good example of a service you might not want effectually.

Hit Beginning, type "services" into the search box, and and so click the "Services" event.

In the "Services" window, scroll down and observe the service you're after. Right-click the service and choose the "Properties" control.

In the service's properties window, copy (or write down) the text to the correct of the "Service name" entry.

When you have the service'southward name, y'all can go ahead and close the properties window and the "Services" window.

Step Two: Delete the Service

Now that you accept the name of the service you want to delete, you'll need to open the Command Prompt with administrative privileges to do the deleting.

Click Start, and and then blazon "cmd" into the search box. Right-click the "Control Prompt" result, and then choose the "Run equally administrator" command.

At the Command Prompt, you lot'll use the post-obit syntax:

sc delete                ServiceName              

So, to delete the "RetailDemo" service we're using in our case, we'd blazon the following text, and then hit Enter:

sc delete RetailDemo

Note: If the service you're deleting has whatsoever spaces in the name, you'll have to enclose the name in quotes when y'all blazon the command.

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


Deleting a service in Windows is pretty easy, but nosotros'd again like to caution you to remember long and hard before deleting a service, considering it'southward very difficult to get them back once they're gone.