Disable windows services in Windows 10 command prompt in recovery mode

Question

Is used to be able to reboot Windows into command prompt to use sc config "Service" start= disabled

In Windows 10, if I reboot to command prompty and login as admin, an attempt to do the same will give me sc command or program is not found.

How can I set service state to disabled in command prompt in Windows 10.

Thank you.

Solution

Editing the Registry offline

You need to use Regedit.exe and load the System hive located at:

<driveletter>:\Windows\System32\config\SYSTEM

When in recovery environment, the drive-letter for your Windows installation would be different. Use Bcdedit.exe to find it out.

(For more information on editing registry offline: How to Edit the Registry Offline Using Windows Recovery Environment)

Changing the Service Startup type

(Refer How to Disable a Service or Device That Prevents NT from Booting - The article was originally written for Windows 2000, but still applies to all versions of Windows.)

Once in the Command Prompt window, type Regedit.exe and select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE (or HKEY_USERS). From the File menu, click Load Hive.. and load the SYSTEM hive of your Windows installation. Name the loaded hive as TEST

Go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\TEST\ControlSet001\Services\<short name of the service>

Service startup Registry keys

To disable a service, change the value of Start REG_DWORD to 0x4.

Automatic   0X2
Manual      0x3
Disabled    0x4

After making changes to the service registry key, select the hive named TEST and unload it (via File menu) and exit Regedit.exe.

Comments

[arana]

I have not tried that booting into recovery mode, but looks like sc command is not in the path when booting in this mode, try to cd to \windows\system32 and runing it from there.

[Maxim V. Pavlov]

@arana, the starting point of cmd in recovery is in fact \windows\system32, and sc isn't found there. Nor is sc.exe

[Scott Chamberlain]

X is actually a bad letter to choose for a example, when you boot in to a windows PE environment it uses X by default for the instance of windows that is running.

[w32sh]

Correct! I've removed reference to X:\

[Maxim V. Pavlov]

This is the correct answer. Although there is not service I need in CurrentControlSet1, which is the only one available when I load it in PE. In normal Windows start, I have CurrentControlSet, and it lists the service I need to disable.

[Maxim V. Pavlov]

A clarification, in PXE I have current control set available, but neither it, nor ControlSet001 lists the service I need to have disabled. Any ideas would be helpful.