Service failed to start

[Peter Williams]

After uninstallation of a program a service remain installed. The
service is listed in "Services" and set to automatic startup. His .exe
file is deleted during uninstallation so there is an error event (in
Event Viewer) every time the Windows starts ("service failed to start
due to the following error: The system cannot find the file
specified")

How can I remove this service manually? Does this require an
intervention in the registry?

 

[Dave Douglas]

Start>Run>msconfig>Startup tab
Look for any line with ???.exe and remove check mark.

 

[Peter Williams]

Start>Run>msconfig>Startup tab
Look for any line with ???.exe and remove check mark.

I'm not sure how to use MSConfig. I have unchecked the service on
Services tab and the service became disabled. After restarting the
computer, the Windows starts in Selective Startup mode and the service
is not started. But if I change back to Normal Startup (General tab of
MSConfig) all is returned to previous state and the service is set to
start automatically (of course, it can't start because the .exe
doesn't exist).

I can simply set the service startup type to "disabled" in
Administrative Tools > Services, but this is not enough for me. I want
to completely remove the service from the computer. That means that
the service wouldn't be listed in Services.

Is there any "legal" method to do it?

Maybe it is necessary to delete some registry keys in
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services
and
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root ?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Matthew Mucker [MSFT]]

I'd suggest you just set the startup value to disabled rather than worry
about registry edits.