How to solve The specified service has been marked for deletion error

Question

I try to remove a Windows Service with sc delete  lt service name gt   and encounter the following error       SC  DeleteService FAILED 1072       The specified service has been marked for deletion    What I ve already done    Stopped the service  obviously  The sc queryex   lt service name gt   gives the following result   SERVICE NAME  Stub service         TYPE                 10  WIN32 OWN PROCESS         STATE                1  STOPPED         WIN32 EXIT CODE      1067   0x42b          SERVICE EXIT CODE    0   0x0          CHECKPOINT           0x0         WAIT HINT            0x0         PID                  0         FLAGS                 Ensured that Microsoft Management Console is closed  taskkill  F  IM mmc exe   Ensured that Event Viewer is closed  Removed the key HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Services  lt service name gt  from the registry   Due to this removal  services msc still shows the service  with a name  but no status or startup type   but the description is     lt Failed to Read Description  Error Code  2  gt      When attempting to view the properties     The system cannot find the file specified     is shown five times    The problem persists   What is the next step

User · Answer

This is what worked for me  - I hit the same issue  my service was stuck in  marked for deletion   - I opened services msc   My service did show up as running  although it was already uninstalled  - I clicked Stop   Received an error message  saying the service is not in a state to receive control messages    Nevertheless  the service was stopped  - Closed services msc  - Reopened services msc    - The service was gone  no longer showing in the list of services     The environment was Windows 7

User · Answer

steps to follow   step-1 goto the location C  Windows Microsoft NET Framework v4 0 30319  step-2 run command   installutil  u full-path servicename exe  step-3 close services panel and reopen it  step-4 run command   installutil full-path servicename exe

User · Answer

Discovered one more thing to check - look in Task  manager - if other users are connected to this box  even if they are  disconnected  you have to actually sign them out to get the service to finally delete

User · Answer

Most probably deleting service fails because   protected override void OnStop     throw error when stopping a service  wrapping things inside a try catch will prevent mark for deletion error   protected override void OnStop                 try                                 things to do                           catch  Exception

User · Answer

This can also be caused by leaving the Services console open   Windows won t actually delete the service until it is closed

User · Answer

If the steps provided by  MainMa didn t work follow following steps  Step 1 Try killing the process from windows task manager or using taskkill  F  PID    You can find pid of the process by command  sc queryex    Try next step if you still can t uninstall   Step 2 If above   Run Autoruns for Windows Search for service by name and delete results

User · Answer

That means the service is still listed as disabled in services msc  Just close the services msc and re open as administrator    The service will not be listed  Now  install the service using the command   installutil   path of service

User · Answer

In my case  I execute taskkill  f  im dongleserver exe    where dongleserver exe is my program s exe file   Then I can able to reinstall my program already

User · Answer

Deleting registry keys as suggested above got my service stuck in the stopping state  The following procedure worked for me    open task manager   select services tab   select the service   right click and select  go to process    right click on the process and select End process  Service should be gone after that

User · Answer

There may be several causes which lead to the service being stuck in    marked for deletion       SysInternals  Process Explorer is opened  Closing it should lead to automatic removal of the service  Task Manager is opened  Microsoft Management Console  MMC  is opened  To ensure all instances are closed  run taskkill  F  IM mmc exe  Services console is opened  This is the same as the previous point  since Services console is hosted by MMC  Event Viewer is opened  Again  this is the same as the third point  The key HKEY LOCAL MACHINE SYSTEM CurrentControlSet Services  service name  exists  Someone else is logged into the server and has one of the previously mentioned applications opened  An instance of Visual Studio used to debug the service is open

User · Answer

Sometimes this could happen during service deletion via PowerShell remote session script  especially when you are trying to delete service several times  In this case  try to recreate a session before the deletion   Remove-PSSession -Session  session  newSession   New-PSSession -ComputerName  Name  -Credential  creds -ErrorAction Stop Enter-PSSession  newSession

User · Answer

The main reason for the error is the process is not stopped  to resolve it  start task manager go to services and see if you are still able to see your service than go to the process of that service and end process  Than the issue will be solved completely

User · Answer

In my case  the service name was  Monitor  which is also used by a windows service called  Monitor   when I tried to update my services  I tried uninstalling them  the installer tried to remove the windows service  Monitor  which it couldn t  and the installation was always rolled back   I ended up renaming my service to something else

User · Answer

It seems that on Windows versions later than Windows 7  unverified  but by experience latest with Windows Server 2012 R2   the Service Control Manager  SCM  is more strict   While on Windows 7 it just spawns another process  it is now checking whether the service process is still around and may return ERROR SERVICE MARKED FOR DELETE  1072  for any subsequent call to CreateService DeleteService even if the service appears to be stopped   I am talking Windows API code here  but I want to clearly outline what s happening  so this sequence may lead to mentioned error   SC HANDLE hScm   OpenSCManager nullptr  nullptr  SC MANAGER ALL ACCESS    SC HANDLE hSvc   OpenService hScm  L Stub service   SERVICE STOP   SERVICE QUERY STATUS   DELETE    SERVICE STATUS ss  ControlService hSvc  SERVICE CONTROL STOP   amp ss          wait for service to report its SERVICE STOPPED state  DeleteService hSvc   CloseServiceHandle hSvc   hSvc   nullptr      any further calls to CreateService DeleteService will fail    if service process is still around   The reason a service process is still around after it already has reported its SERVICE STOPPED state isn t surprising  It s a regular process  whose main thread is  stuck  in its call to the StartServiceCtrlDispatcher API  so it first reacts to a stop control action  but then has to execute its remaining code sequence   It s kind of unfortunate the SCM OS isn t handling this properly for us  A programmatic solution is kinda simple and accurate  obtain the service executable s process handle before stopping the service  then wait for this handle to become signaled   If approaching the issue from a system administration perspective the solution is also to wait for the service process to disappear completely

User · Answer

This works for me    Open Task Manager Select services tab Select the service with the issue Right click and select  Go to details  Right click on the service and select  End process tree    End process tree will end the process and all the processes created by the process   Then  you can reinstall the service

User · Answer

Closing the services console as suggested by a few of the answers here did allow me to remove the service  In my scenario this was only a short term fix since all subsequent reinstalls and removal of the service would require me to take these additional steps  Reviewing my web config file  it was discovered that there was an error that once fixed  allowed me to easily remove the service without the additional closing of the services console step

User · Answer

Closing every window that was currently open followed by running the following command solved the issue for me   taskkill  F  IM mmc exe

User · Answer

In my case  it was caused by unhandled exception while creating eventLog source  Use try catch to pin point the cause

User · Answer

In my case it worked after closing the Services  Check if the Services msc is open  if yes close it and check any process of service is found in Task Manager

User · Answer

I was having this issue when I was using Application Verifier to verify my win service  Even after I closed App Ver my service was blocked from deletion  Only removing the service from App Ver resolved the issue and service was deleted right away  Looks like some process still using your service after you tried to delete one

User · Answer

I had the same problem  finally I decide to kill service process   for it try below steps    get process id of service with  sc queryex  lt service name gt  kill process with   taskkill  F  PID  lt Service PID gt

[windows-services] How to solve "The specified service has been marked for deletion" error

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