How to Remove a Service in Windows

Windows services are programs that run in the background without user interaction. Most of these services are necessary for the correct functioning of the operating system and the applications you have installed.

However, some services are really unnecessary, or even worse, perform unwanted actions or consume too many resources.

The first thing to mention is that not all services run automatically. Some services are only activated manually and others are simply started in response to a certain action (such as when you run a program).

If you have doubts, in any case, before completely eliminating a service, the best thing you can do is disable it and see how this affects your PC.

How to remove a service in Windows 11/10

If you are already clear that there is a service that is bothering you and want to permanently delete it from the system so that it stops consuming resources, you can do it using two methods:

• Deleting it from the Windows registry.
• Using a command line in a terminal window.

Both methods work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. They probably work on older versions of Windows as well, but we haven’t been able to verify that.

Method #1: Use the Windows registry editor

Whenever you access the Windows registry editor, remember that this type of management is very delicate. You are advised to make a backup to restore the registry in the event of a serious failure.

Note: You can make a backup of the Windows registry by clicking on “File -> Export” in the options bar of the registry editor.

Let’s go there. The first thing is to know the exact name of the service you want to eliminate.

• Press the Win+R keys and execute the command “ services.msc ”.
• Inside the Services window, double click on the service and write down what exactly it says in the “ Service name ” field.
• Just in case, also make a backup copy of the Windows services by clicking on the “Export list” button.

Now that you have the name of the service noted down, proceed to open the Windows registry editor.

• Press Win+R and run the command “ regedit.exe ”.
• In the registry editor go to “ Edit -> Find ” and type the name of the service.
• The service folder may not appear in the first result. If so, click on “ Edit -> Find next ” until you locate the folder or service key in the menu on the left that appears in the registry.
• If you click on this folder, you will see that in the window on the right the value of “ DisplayName ” corresponds to the full name of the service.
• To finish, right-click on the folder in the left menu, and select “ Delete ”. Click on “Yes” to confirm the definitive deletion of the key.

After doing this close the Windows registry editor and restart the PC for the changes to take effect.

Method #2: Kill the service using commands

Another much more direct method to delete a service in Windows is to apply a simple command line from the system’s terminal window.

All you need is the name of the service you want to delete written down, following the steps indicated in the first method that we have just explained.

• Open the Windows taskbar search engine and type “cmd”. Choose the best match, which will be “Command Prompt”, right-click and select “ Run as administrator ”.
• Inside the terminal window, run the following command, where “service_name” corresponds to the name we noted earlier in the Windows services window:
  • sc delete service_name

Once the order is completed, restart the PC so that the changes made are applied.