Simplest way to restart service on a remote computer
What's the easiest programmatic way to restart a service on a remote Windows system? Language or method doesn't matter as long as it doesn't require human interaction.
Answer
As of Windows XP, you can use sc.exe to interact with local and remote services. Schedule a task to run a batch file similar to this:
sc \\server stop service sc \\server start service
Make sure the task runs under a user account privileged on the target server.
psservice.exe from the Sysinternals PSTools would also be doing the job:
psservice \\server restart service