Last time we discussed how to handle Windows services with Microsft Powershell. This time we get a little deeper by restarting multiple services at once with an additional check if they all restart successful.

The challenge

The implementation

First we have to get the services we want to restart. We already had the ‘Get-Service’ commandlet. As you can see the relevant services of GFI Faxmaker have ‘Faxmaker’ in their names or ‘GFI Faxmaker’ in their display names.

Get-Service

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-Service | Where-Object DisplayName -Like 'GFI*'

Status   Name               DisplayName
------   ----               -----------
Running  FAXmaker Fax Se... GFI FaxMaker Fax Server
Running  FAXmaker MTA Se... GFI FaxMaker Message Transfer Agent
Running  GFI FaxMaker WSAPI GFI FaxMaker WSAPI

PS C:\Windows\system32> Get-Service | Where-Object Name -eq 'SMTPSVC'

Status   Name               DisplayName                           
------   ----               -----------                           
Running  SMTPSVC            Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

$services = Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.Name -like '*Faxmaker*' -or $_.Name -eq 'SMTPSVC'}

foreach ($service in $services)
{
    Restart-Service $service
}

The ‘Restart-Service’ commandlet usually waits until a service is restarted. As soon as it finishes it’s work the next commands of a script will be handled. So we should assume that all services are restarted. Nevertheless there are various resons why something didn’t work as expected. The service start can run into a timeout or the service crashes for any reason. To prove that everything is fine we want to check the service status of each of our four services.

We still have all services in a single variable and have to check that the status of all services is ‘Running’. The easiest way is to check the number of services we have

PS C:\Windows\system32> $services.Count
4

against the services that are in the status ‘Running’

PS C:\Windows\system32> $runningsvc = Get-Service $services.Name | Where-Object Status -eq 'Running'
$runningsvc.count
4

Not to mention that we only have to check whether those two values must be equal to be sure that all the needed services are running.

$services = Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.Name -like '*Faxmaker*' -or $_.Name -eq 'SMTPSVC'}
$runningsvc = Get-Service $services.Name | Where-Object Status -eq 'Running'
if ($services.Count -ne $runningsvc.Count)
{
    Write-Host Not equal
}
else
{
    Write-Host Equal
}

Let’s assume we want to check three times if all is fine to be sure we don’t produce an error message as long as a service needs a little more time to restart. So we have to run this test three times in a loop. As long as there is a difference between the number of running services we wait 30 more seconds (Start-Sleep 30).

$services = Get-Service | Where-Object {$_.Name -like '*Faxmaker*' -or $_.Name -eq 'SMTPSVC'}
$runningsvc = Get-Service $services.Name | Where-Object Status -eq 'Running'

$i = 1
while ($i -le 3)
{
    if ($services.Count -ne $runningsvc.Count)
    {
        Start-Sleep 30
    }
    $i++
}

If there is still a difference we generate an error message and send it as an email:

if ($services.Count -ne $runningsvc.Count)
{
    Send-MailMessage -to "admin@example.com" -from "error@example" -SmtpServer 192.168.100.7 -Subject "Error restarting Services" -Body ($services |Format-Table -AutoSize| Out-String) -encoding ([System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8)
}

Conclusion

Usually it should be normal, that a Windows service should run all day long and should just work. Nevertheless there are situations where it is not the case. Restarting services on a daily base is just a workaround but if you need that workaround you can use this post as a base for your individual situation. There is software available without an integrated backup option but with a documented way how to back it up manually. Most times you have to stop the service or services, copy some files and start the services again. You can automate those steps within a Powershell script but you should ensure that after creating the backup all services will run again.

I didn’t describe all steps in detail like the mail option. If you have questions or things aren’t clear enough then pleas feel free to ask your questions within the comments.

Recommendation

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