Hi, How can I stop a windows service which internally has the "CanStop" property set to false? Regards Rainer

You can use Sysinternals, use the procexp tool, then find the process the service is under. You can double click it and it will bring up the service tab, then on the bottom right is a stop button. This is about the only way I know of that will give you a chance to stop it on the spot. Sysinternals: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx John Wiley

Hi John, thanks for your response. I tried your suggestion, but that won't work either. The StopButton there is disabled as well. Regards Rainer

I dug a little deeper and found that you can get to the permission setting in which, stop, start and pause are a few of the advanced edit options. I got there by again using procexp> then highlight the service or service .dll>then click permissions>then click advanced>then highlight name choice out of the list here then click edit. Things may be grayed out here too, but wanted to turn this stone over just in case. Be sure to be logged as admin, or when you’re running procexp, right click and “run as admin” to avoid possible grayed out permissions.John Wiley

I forgot to mention that the permission button is located on the bottom left after double clicking the chosen process to break down from within procexp.John Wiley

Hi John, thanks once more for your replies. I had already seen the "permission" button before and tried it as you suggested. As you already assumed the start/stop buttons were greyed out. I also tried the KillProces/KillProcessTree without success (all of that with "run as administrator"). Since this is a self written service which currently is started manually the problem isn't too big. But before I switch it to "start on system startup" I want to make sure, that I don't have a service I can't get rid of any more.... Regards Rainer