Service Control Manager

The service control manager (SCM) is started at system boot. It is a remote procedure call (RPC) server, so that service configuration and service control programs can manipulate services on remote machines.

The Win32 API includes a set of functions that provide an interface for the following tasks performed by the SCM:

• Maintaining the database of installed services.
• Starting services and driver services either upon system startup or upon demand.
• Enumerating installed services and driver services.
• Maintaining status information for running services and driver services.
• Transmitting control requests to running services.
• Locking and unlocking the service database.

The following sections describe the SCM in more detail:

• Database of Installed Services
• Automatically Starting Services
• Starting Services on Demand
• Service Record List
• SCM Handles