Stop service running on remote computer using WMI in C#

In this article, I will show you how you can stop service running on a remote computer in C# using WMI query.

First, create a console application in C# using visual studio.

Write the below code to get a service running on remote computer and stop it. To run this code you will need to add reference to System.Management dll and add a using statement.

using System.Management;

static void Main(string[] args)

 

        {

            try

            {

                

                #region Code to stop the service               

                //Assign the name of the service you want to stop on the remote machine

                string serviceName = "audiosrv";

 

                //Assign the user name and password of the account to ConnectionOptions object

                //which have administrative privilege on the remote machine.

                ConnectionOptions connectoptions = new ConnectionOptions();

                //connectoptions.Impersonation = ImpersonationLevel.Impersonate; 

                connectoptions.Username = @"Domain\UserName";

                connectoptions.Password = "Password";

 

                //IP Address of the remote machine

                string ipAddress = "192.168.206.53";

                ManagementScope scope = new ManagementScope(@"\\" + ipAddress + @"\root\cimv2");

                scope.Options = connectoptions;

                //Define the WMI query to be executed on the remote machine

                SelectQuery query = new SelectQuery("select * from Win32_Service where name = '" + serviceName + "'");

 

                using (ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new

                            ManagementObjectSearcher(scope, query))

                {

                    ManagementObjectCollection collection=searcher.Get();

                    foreach (ManagementObject service in collection)

                    {

                        if (service["Started"].Equals(true))

                        {

                            //Stop the service

                            service.InvokeMethod("StopService", null);

                        }

                       

                    }

                }

                Console.ReadLine();

                #endregion

 

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                //Log exception in exception log.

                //Logger.WriteEntry(ex.StackTrace);

                Console.WriteLine(ex.StackTrace);

                 

            }

        }







In this code, first we get the particualr service object using WMI query

Select * from WIN32_Service where name=servicename, 

Then we invoke StopService action on the service using object.InvokeMethod to stop it if it is already running.

To access the services on the remote computer using this command, user should have administrative previlages on the remote machine. If the current user running the application has admin access on the remote machine, we can authenticate the user using Impersonation like below

connectoptions.Impersonation = ImpersonationLevel.Impersonate

or we can provide Username and password of an administrator account on the remote machine to the ConnectionOptions object like below:

connectoptions.Username = @"Domain\UserName";

connectoptions.Password = "Password";

Similarly to start the service, just provide StartService action in the InvokeMethod.

e.g just change the line in the above code to the following

service.InvokeMethod("StartService", null);

In this way, we can start and stop remote services using WMI query in C#.

Have Fun!!