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

Question

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

[SC] DeleteService FAILED 1072:

The specified service has been marked for deletion.

What I've already done:

Stopped the service, obviously. The sc queryex "" gives the following result:

SERVICE_NAME: Stub service
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 1  STOPPED
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 1067  (0x42b)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0
        PID                : 0
        FLAGS              :

Ensured that Microsoft Management Console is closed (taskkill /F /IM mmc.exe),
Ensured that Event Viewer is closed,
Removed the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ from the registry.

Due to this removal, services.msc still shows the service (with a name, but no status or startup type), but the description is “”. When attempting to view the properties, “The system cannot find the file specified.” is shown five times.

The problem persists.

What is the next step?

user_236988 · Answer

Closing the services console as suggested by a few of the answers here did allow me to remove the service. In my scenario this was only a short term fix since all subsequent reinstalls and removal of the service would require me to take these additional steps. Reviewing my web.config file, it was discovered that there was an error that once fixed, allowed me to easily remove the service without the additional closing of the services console step.

user_10160655 · Answer

This works for me.

Open Task Manager
Select services tab
Select the service with the issue
Right click and select "Go to details"
Right click on the service and select "End process tree"

End process tree will end the process and all the processes created by the process.

Then, you can reinstall the service.

user_847769 · Answer

In my case, the service name was 'Monitor' which is also used by a windows service called 'Monitor', when I tried to update my services, I tried uninstalling them, the installer tried to remove the windows service 'Monitor' which it couldn't, and the installation was always rolled back.

I ended up renaming my service to something else

user_3687849 · Answer

steps to follow:

step-1 goto the location C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319

step-2 run command: installutil /u full-path/servicename.exe

step-3 close services panel and reopen it

step-4 run command: installutil full-path/servicename.exe

user_976503 · Answer

Most probably deleting service fails because

protected override void OnStop()

throw error when stopping a service. wrapping things inside a try catch will prevent mark for deletion error

protected override void OnStop()
{
            try
            {
                //things to do
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
            }

}

user_4623288 · Answer

Sometimes this could happen during service deletion via PowerShell remote session script, especially when you are trying to delete service several times. In this case, try to recreate a session before the deletion:

Remove-PSSession -Session $session
$newSession = New-PSSession -ComputerName $Name  -Credential $creds -ErrorAction Stop
Enter-PSSession $newSession

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

21 Answers