Using the WASService.exe Command

The WASService.exe command allows you to setup a Windows service for a WebSphere server. The command has its own idiosyncratic behavior. Best way to learn about the program is through actual examples.

Removing a Service

Removing a  service seems pretty easy:

wasservice -remove SERVICE_NAME

What this command considers as service name is not same as Windows. A service has two names in Windows. A display name and service name. You can find out more about these names by running this Windows command

sc query state= all

Note: Notice the space after “state=”. Without the space, the command will fail.

WebSphere service names usually contain “IBM”. So, you can view all registered WebSphere services by running this command:

sc query state= all  | findstr IBM

If Windows shows the service name (not the display name) as “IBMWAS70Service – myNode01”, then you need to use myNode01 as the service name for the wasservice command. That is, use the name after “-“. For example:

wasservice  -remove  myNode01

This is effectively same as running the command:

sc  delete "IBMWAS70Service – myNode01"

Adding a Service

The example below will show you how to add a service that has administrative security enabled.

This will create a Windows service called “IBMWAS70Service – myNode01” for WAS7 and “IBMWAS80Service – myNode01” in WAS8.

Note: that the entire stopArgs argument has to be within double quotes.