Check if a Windows service exists and delete in PowerShell

Question

You can use WMI or other tools for this since there is no Remove-Service cmdlet until Powershell 6.0 (See Remove-Service doc)

For example:

$service = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Filter "Name='servicename'"
$service.delete()

Or with the sc.exe tool:

sc.exe delete ServiceName

Finally, if you do have access to PowerShell 6.0:

Remove-Service -Name ServiceName

There's no harm in using the right tool for the job, I find running (from Powershell)

sc.exe \\server delete "MyService" 

the most reliable method that does not have many dependencies.

If you just want to check service existence:

if (Get-Service "My Service" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue)
{
    "service exists"
}

I used the "-ErrorAction SilentlyContinue" solution but then later ran into the problem that it leaves an ErrorRecord behind. So here's another solution to just checking if the Service exists using "Get-Service".

# Determines if a Service exists with a name as defined in $ServiceName.
# Returns a boolean $True or $False.
Function ServiceExists([string] $ServiceName) {
    [bool] $Return = $False
    # If you use just "Get-Service $ServiceName", it will return an error if 
    # the service didn't exist.  Trick Get-Service to return an array of 
    # Services, but only if the name exactly matches the $ServiceName.  
    # This way you can test if the array is emply.
    if ( Get-Service "$ServiceName*" -Include $ServiceName ) {
        $Return = $True
    }
    Return $Return
}

[bool] $thisServiceExists = ServiceExists "A Service Name"
$thisServiceExists 

But ravikanth has the best solution since the Get-WmiObject will not throw an error if the Service didn't exist. So I settled on using:

Function ServiceExists([string] $ServiceName) {
    [bool] $Return = $False
    if ( Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Filter "Name='$ServiceName'" ) {
        $Return = $True
    }
    Return $Return
}

So to offer a more complete solution:

# Deletes a Service with a name as defined in $ServiceName.
# Returns a boolean $True or $False.  $True if the Service didn't exist or was 
# successfully deleted after execution.
Function DeleteService([string] $ServiceName) {
    [bool] $Return = $False
    $Service = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Filter "Name='$ServiceName'" 
    if ( $Service ) {
        $Service.Delete()
        if ( -Not ( ServiceExists $ServiceName ) ) {
            $Return = $True
        }
    } else {
        $Return = $True
    }
    Return $Return
}