Q: How can I set a service to "Automatic (Delayed Start)" from the command line?

A: Services can be set to be disabled, start manually, or start automatically. You can also set a service to start automatically, but with a delayed start that initiates after the system has finished booting, giving you a faster system boot.

When a service is configured for a delayed automatic start, a DWORD registry value is present under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetservices. It's named DelayedAutoStart and it's set to 1, along with a Start value of 2—which is the normal value for automatic start.

We can set this using the SC command:

C:>sc config SVCNAME start= delayed-auto
[SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS

Note you must have the space between the "start=" and the "delayed-auto" or it will not work.