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

Arseni Mourzenko picture Arseni Mourzenko · Dec 13, 2013 · Viewed 524.9k times · Source

I try to remove a Windows Service with sc delete <service name>, and encounter the following error:

[SC] DeleteService FAILED 1072:

The specified service has been marked for deletion.

What I've already done:

The problem persists.

What is the next step?

Answer

Arseni Mourzenko picture Arseni Mourzenko · Dec 13, 2013

There may be several causes which lead to the service being stuck in “marked for deletion”.

  1. SysInternals' Process Explorer is opened. Closing it should lead to automatic removal of the service.

  2. Task Manager is opened.

  3. Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is opened. To ensure all instances are closed, run taskkill /F /IM mmc.exe.

  4. Services console is opened. This is the same as the previous point, since Services console is hosted by MMC.

  5. Event Viewer is opened. Again, this is the same as the third point.

  6. The key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\{service name} exists.

  7. Someone else is logged into the server and has one of the previously mentioned applications opened.

  8. An instance of Visual Studio used to debug the service is open.