[powershell] Using Powershell to stop a service remotely without WMI or remoting

I came across this one liner that appears to work:

stop-service -inputobject $(get-service -ComputerName remotePC -Name Spooler)

Can anyone explain why, because I thought stop-service didn't work unless you either used remoting or it occurred on the local host.

Thanks to everyone's contributions to this question, I've come up with the following script. Change the values for $SvcName and $SvrName to suit your needs. This script will start the remote service if it is stopped, or stop it if it is started. And it uses the cool .WaitForStatus method to wait while the service responds.

#Change this values to suit your needs:
$SvcName = 'Spooler'
$SvrName = 'remotePC'

#Initialize variables:
[string]$WaitForIt = ""
[string]$Verb = ""
[string]$Result = "FAILED"
$svc = (get-service -computername $SvrName -name $SvcName)
Write-host "$SvcName on $SvrName is $($svc.status)"
Switch ($svc.status) {
    'Stopped' {
        Write-host "Starting $SvcName..."
        $Verb = "start"
        $WaitForIt = 'Running'
        $svc.Start()}
    'Running' {
        Write-host "Stopping $SvcName..."
        $Verb = "stop"
        $WaitForIt = 'Stopped'
        $svc.Stop()}
    Default {
        Write-host "$SvcName is $($svc.status).  Taking no action."}
}
if ($WaitForIt -ne "") {
    Try {  # For some reason, we cannot use -ErrorAction after the next statement:
        $svc.WaitForStatus($WaitForIt,'00:02:00')
    } Catch {
        Write-host "After waiting for 2 minutes, $SvcName failed to $Verb."
    }
    $svc = (get-service -computername $SvrName -name $SvcName)
    if ($svc.status -eq $WaitForIt) {$Result = 'SUCCESS'}
    Write-host "$Result`: $SvcName on $SvrName is $($svc.status)"
}

Of course, the account you run this under will need the proper privileges to access the remote computer and start and stop services. And when executing this against older remote machines, you might first have to install WinRM 3.0 on the older machine.

Another option; use invoke-command:

cls
$cred = Get-Credential
$server = 'MyRemoteComputer'
$service = 'My Service Name' 

invoke-command -Credential $cred -ComputerName $server -ScriptBlock {
    param(
       [Parameter(Mandatory=$True,Position=0)]
       [string]$service
    )
    stop-service $service 
} -ArgumentList $service

NB: to use this option you'll need PowerShell to be installed on the remote machine and for the firewall to allow requests through, and for the Windows Remote Management service to be running on the target machine. You can configure the firewall by running the following script directly on the target machine (one off task): Enable-PSRemoting -force.

This worked for me, but I used it as start. powershell outputs, waiting for service to finshing starting a few times then finishes and then a get-service on the remote server shows the service started.

**start**-service -inputobject $(get-service -ComputerName remotePC -Name Spooler)

stop-service -inputobject $(get-service -ComputerName remotePC -Name Spooler)

This fails because of your variables -ComputerName remotePC needs to be a variable $remotePC or a string "remotePC" -Name Spooler(same thing for spooler)

As far as I know, and I cant verify it now, you cannot stop remote services with the Stop-Service cmdlet or with .Net, it is not supported.

Yes it works, but it stopes the service on your local machine, not on the remote computer.

Now, if the above is correct, without remoting or wmi enabled, you could set a scheduled job on the remote system, using AT, that runs Stop-Service locally.

Based on the built-in Powershell examples, this is what Microsoft suggests. Tested and verified:

To stop:

(Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -filter "name='IPEventWatcher'" -ComputerName Server01).StopService()

To start:

(Get-WmiObject Win32_Service -filter "name='IPEventWatcher'" -ComputerName Server01).StartService()

You can also do (Get-Service -Name "what ever" - ComputerName RemoteHost).Status = "Stopped"