JSI Tip 6385. How do I configure service recovery on remote computers?

In tip 2516, we configured service recovery using the GUI.

The preferred method for configuring service recovery on a remote computer is to use SC.EXE from the Windows 2000 Resource Kit Supplement (which can be installed on Windows 2000 Professional).

The general syntax for using SC.EXE is:

sc [\ServerName] Command ServiceName [OptionName=OptionValue...]

Parameters

\ServerNameSpecifies the name of the server if you are running the commands on a remote computer. The name must start with two backslash characters (\). If you are running the commands on the local computer, do not supply this parameter.CommandSpecifies one of the following SC commands:

The following commands do not require a service name. Their syntax follows:
sc [ServerName] Command [OptionName=OptionValue...]

ServiceNamespecifies the name given to the service key in the registry. This is different from the display name that you see in Service.exe. You can get the ServiceName from the display name by running:

sc GetKeyName DisplayName

OptionNamespecifies the name of an optional command parameter. You can supply from zero to any number of optional pairs of parameter names and values. For a list of available names, run:

sc Command

where Command is a valid command name as listed above.OptionValuespecifies the value for the parameter named by OptionName. For a list of available values, run:

sc Command

where Command is a valid command name as listed above.

Help Information at the Command Prompt

Using SC without parameters displays help for the tool. To display help for specific SC commands, use the following command prompt syntax:

sc Command

where Command is a valid command name other than Query or QueryEx.

The Query and QueryEx commands cause SC to list the status of all running services. For information about the Query and QueryEx commands, run the command sc, and at the prompt "Would you like to see help for the QUERY and QUERYEX commands?" type: y

When you type SC failure, you receive:

DESCRIPTION:        Changes the actions upon failureUSAGE:        sc failure [service name] ...OPTIONS:        reset=                 (Must be used in conjunction with actions= )        reboot=         command=         actions=   >                  (Must be used in conjunction with the reset= option)

You might configure the Task Scheduler on a remote computer as follows:

SC \ failure Schedule reset= 3600 reboot="Restarting do to Schedule failure" actions= restart/5000/restart/5000/reboot/1000

If you don't have the Resource Kit, you can manually configure the recovery and then export the service key. Here is an example of the Schedule service, after removing the unwanted Value Names and Keys:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesSchedule]
"FailureCommand"=""
"FailureActions"=hex: 00,configuration,00
"RebootMessage"=""

To configure all the remote computers in your domains, you can use Computers.bat to pass the to the SC command or use Workstation.bat to run regedit /s filename.reg on the remote computers.