Creating Service Dependencies

Wow isn’t that embarrassing?  Have you ever thought you had done something, swore up and down that it was so, only to have others tell you it isn’t so?

Sadly, I pointed some of our developers to my blog.  They were looking for how to create service dependencies on a Windows server.  Normally I’d do this myself but didn’t have the time.  I ended up having to email them instructions … because … as they pointed out to me, the instructions were NOT here on my blog.

Ops!

I had them in another article I had written for the office.

HOWEVER, I restate, these instructions can be found on my blog!

To create service dependencies you need to do the following:

  1. Backup your current registry settings. (important step, well unless you’re confident you “got this”)
  2. Run ‘regedit’ to open your registry.  (or if you prefer regedt32)
  3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services and locate the service that you need to set a dependency for.
  4. Open the ‘DependOnService’ key on the right side. If the selected service does not have a ‘DependOnService’ key, then create one by right-clicking and selecting New > Multi-String Value. (a.k.a. – REG_MULTI_SZ)
  5. In the value field, enter the names of all services that the current service will depend on. Each service name must be entered properly (exactly as it appears as a service name in the registry) and on a separate line for each service.
  6. Click OK, close your registry and restart your machine.