11

Is there a way to rename a windows service? Not the display name, mind you, the actual name. I can't seem to edit the value in enum\root to be what I want, and there ought to be an easier way, I just can't find it!

| improve this question | |
  • 2
    Why do you want to do this? I'd imagine it'd break whatever process relied on that service... – Dentrasi Nov 9 '10 at 21:20
10

IIRC the following worked for me (once):

This is nothing I ever would recommend doing

This is what I did

  1. open regedit
  2. navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
  3. Look at the keys in the treestructure inside the left pane and select the service you would like to rename
  4. Rename the key using the Rename entry in the Context-Menu
  5. If there is a subkey named enum delete it. It will get recreated the next time the service starts.
  6. You might want to change the Subkey DisplayName according to the new service name
  7. Reboot the machine for changes to take effect
  8. Pray it did not screw things up
| improve this answer | |
3

Use SC.exe Create to create a new service in Windows with the paramaters that you want. Then use SC.exe Delete to delete the old service.

SC is a command line program built in to Windows that is used for communicating with the Service Control Manager and services.

| improve this answer | |
  • 1
    I disencourage you to answer old posts without adding some value add, and even not really answering the question. The question is about to rename a service, and create a new one and delete the previous could be used as a comment but seems to be a poor answer. – alphamikevictor Jun 10 '15 at 15:44
  • I don't aggree with alphamikevictor. The info is useful for the question. – Andreas Dietrich Apr 4 '19 at 13:29
0

The permissions on ENUM/Root are quite strict, besides I believe it's a dynamic area controlled by Windows. The place you want to be looking is HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services.

| improve this answer | |
  • Yeah, I tried editing that, but the services menu just declared that a registry key was not found :^) – Nate Nov 9 '10 at 20:48
  • You don't say what your service is doing, but you could capture the existing service's parametes as a .REG file, remove the existing service and create a new one using SC.EXE. Then edit the .REG to rename the "key" entries ([HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\<name>\...], plus remove any system generated stuff (password hash, etc). Re-import and reboot. Alternatively, manually add the display name, dependencies, Etc. Of course, I'd test on a VM first ;-) – Simon Catlin Nov 9 '10 at 20:59

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.