What do I do if a service cannot be manually started on a Windows instance? - Elastic Compute Service

This topic describes the cause of and solution to the following issue: A service cannot be manually started on a Windows instance.

Issue description

When you run the net start command in Command Prompt to start a service on a Windows instance, the service cannot be started and a message similar to "The service is being started or stopped. Try again later" is displayed.

Solution

Connect to the Windows instance.
For more information, see Connect to a Windows instance by using a password.
Right-click the Start icon, select Run, enter services.msc, and then click OK. The Services window appears.
Find the service that you want to start and obtain the service name.
Start Command Prompt and run the following command to obtain the process ID (PID) of the service:
```
sc queryex <$Service_Name>
```
Note
Set <$Service_Name> to the service name that you obtained in the previous step.
Run the following command to stop the process of the service.
```
taskkill /f /pid <$PID>
```
Note
Set <$PID> to the PID that you obtained in the previous step.
Restart the service.