Start / Stop a Windows Service from a non-Administrator user account

Question

Below I have put together everything I learned about Starting/Stopping a Windows Service from a non-Admin user account, if anyone needs to know.

Primarily, there are two ways in which to Start / Stop a Windows Service. 1. Directly accessing the service through logon Windows user account. 2. Accessing the service through IIS using Network Service account.

Command line command to start / stop services:

C:/> net start <SERVICE_NAME>
C:/> net stop <SERVICE_NAME>

C# Code to start / stop services:

ServiceController service = new ServiceController(SERVICE_NAME);

//Start the service
if (service.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped)
{
      service.Start();
      service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Running, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10.0));
}

//Stop the service
if (service.Status == ServiceControllerStatus.Running)
{
      service.Stop();
      service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10.0));
}

Note 1: When accessing the service through IIS, create a Visual Studio C# ASP.NET Web Application and put the code in there. Deploy the WebService to IIS Root Folder (C:\inetpub\wwwroot\) and you're good to go. Access it by the url http:///.

1. Direct Access Method

If the Windows User Account from which either you give the command or run the code is a non-Admin account, then you need to set the privileges to that particular user account so it has the ability to start and stop Windows Services. This is how you do it. Login to an Administrator account on the computer which has the non-Admin account from which you want to Start/Stop the service. Open up the command prompt and give the following command:

C:/>sc sdshow <SERVICE_NAME>

Output of this will be something like this:

D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)

It lists all the permissions each User / Group on this computer has with regards to .

A description of one part of above command is as follows:

    D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)

It has the default owner, default group, and it has the Security descriptor control flags (A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY):

ace_type - "A": ACCESS_ALLOWED_ACE_TYPE,
ace_flags - n/a,
rights - CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC,  please refer to the Access Rights and Access Masks and Directory Services Access Rights
CC: ADS_RIGHT_DS_CREATE_CHILD - Create a child DS object.
LC: ADS_RIGHT_ACTRL_DS_LIST - Enumerate a DS object.
SW: ADS_RIGHT_DS_SELF - Access allowed only after validated rights checks supported by the object are performed. This flag can be used alone to perform all validated rights checks of the object or it can be combined with an identifier of a specific validated right to perform only that check.
RP: ADS_RIGHT_DS_READ_PROP - Read the properties of a DS object.
WP: ADS_RIGHT_DS_WRITE_PROP - Write properties for a DS object.
DT: ADS_RIGHT_DS_DELETE_TREE - Delete a tree of DS objects.
LO: ADS_RIGHT_DS_LIST_OBJECT - List a tree of DS objects.
CR: ADS_RIGHT_DS_CONTROL_ACCESS - Access allowed only after extended rights checks supported by the object are performed. This flag can be used alone to perform all extended rights checks on the object or it can be combined with an identifier of a specific extended right to perform only that check.
RC: READ_CONTROL - The right to read the information in the object's security descriptor, not including the information in the system access control list (SACL). (This is a Standard Access Right, please read more http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa379607(VS.85).aspx)
object_guid - n/a,
inherit_object_guid - n/a,
account_sid - "SY": Local system. The corresponding RID is SECURITY_LOCAL_SYSTEM_RID.

Now what we need to do is to set the appropriate permissions to Start/Stop Windows Services to the groups or users we want. In this case we need the current non-Admin user be able to Start/Stop the service so we are going to set the permissions to that user. To do that, we need the SID of that particular Windows User Account. To obtain it, open up the Registry (Start > regedit) and locate the following registry key.

LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

Under that there is a seperate Key for each an every user account in this computer, and the key name is the SID of each account. SID are usually of the format S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000. Click on each Key, and you will see on the pane to the right a list of values for each Key. Locate "ProfileImagePath", and by it's value you can find the User Name that SID belongs to. For instance, if the user name of the account is SACH, then the value of "ProfileImagePath" will be something like "C:\Users\Sach". So note down the SID of the user account you want to set the permissions to.

Note2: Here a simple C# code sample which can be used to obtain a list of said Keys and it's values.

//LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList RegistryKey
RegistryKey profileList = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(keyName);

//Get a list of SID corresponding to each account on the computer
string[] sidList = profileList.GetSubKeyNames();

foreach (string sid in sidList)
{
    //Based on above names, get 'Registry Keys' corresponding to each SID
    RegistryKey profile = Registry.LocalMachine.OpenSubKey(Path.Combine(keyName, sid));

    //SID
    string strSID = sid;
    //UserName which is represented by above SID    
    string strUserName = (string)profile.GetValue("ProfileImagePath");
}

Now that we have the SID of the user account we want to set the permissions to, let's get down to it. Let's assume the SID of the user account is S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000. Copy the output of the [sc sdshow ] command to a text editor. It will look like this:

D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)

Now, copy the (A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY) part of the above text, and paste it just before the S:(AU;... part of the text. Then change that part to look like this: (A;;RPWPCR;;;S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000)

Then add sc sdset at the front, and enclose the above part with quotes. Your final command should look something like the following:

sc sdset <SERVICE_NAME> "D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)(A;;RPWPCR;;;S-1-5-21-2103278432-2794320136-1883075150-1000)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)"

Now execute this in your command prompt, and it should give the output as follows if successful:

[SC] SetServiceObjectSecurity SUCCESS

Now we're good to go! Your non-Admin user account has been granted permissions to Start/Stop your service! Try loggin in to the user account and Start/Stop the service and it should let you do that.

2. Access through IIS Method

In this case, we need to grant the permission to the IIS user "Network Services" instead of the logon Windows user account. The procedure is the same, only the parameters of the command will be changed. Since we set the permission to "Network Services", replace SID with the string "NS" in the final sdset command we used previously. The final command should look something like this:

sc sdset <SERVICE_NAME> "D:(A;;CCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRRC;;;SY)(A;;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;BA)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;IU)(A;;CCLCSWLOCRRC;;;SU)(A;;RPWPCR;;;NS)S:(AU;FA;CCDCLCSWRPWPDTLOCRSDRCWDWO;;;WD)"

Execute it in the command prompt from an Admin user account, and voila! You have the permission to Start / Stop the service from any user account (irrespective of whether it ia an Admin account or not) using a WebMethod. Refer to Note1 to find out how to do so.

I use the SubInACL utility for this. For example, if I wanted to give the user job on the computer VMX001 the ability to start and stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service (also know as w3svc), I would issue the following command as an Administrator:

subinacl.exe /service w3svc /grant=VMX001\job=PTO

The permissions you can grant are defined as follows (list taken from here):

F : Full Control
R : Generic Read
W : Generic Write
X : Generic eXecute
L : Read controL
Q : Query Service Configuration
S : Query Service Status
E : Enumerate Dependent Services
C : Service Change Configuration
T : Start Service
O : Stop Service
P : Pause/Continue Service
I : Interrogate Service 
U : Service User-Defined Control Commands

So, by specifying PTO, I am entitling the job user to Pause/Continue, Start, and Stop the w3svc service.

---

Edit: updated links to web.archive.org since the original MS links are dead.

1. Login as an administrator.
2. Download subinacl.exe from Microsoft:
   http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23510
3. Grant permissions to the regular user account to manage the BST services.
   ^{(subinacl.exe is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\).}
4. cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\
subinacl /SERVICE \\MachineName\bst /GRANT=domainname.com\username=F or
   subinacl /SERVICE \\MachineName\bst /GRANT=username=F
5. Logout and log back in as the user. They should now be able to launch the BST service.

There is a free GUI Tool ServiceSecurityEditor

Which allows you to edit Windows Service permissions. I have successfully used it to give a non-Administrator user the rights to start and stop a service.

I had used "sc sdset" before I knew about this tool.

ServiceSecurityEditor feels like cheating, it's that easy :)

It's significantly easier to grant management permissions to a service using one of these tools:

• Group Policy
• Security Template
• subinacl.exe command-line tool.

Here's the MSKB article with instructions for Windows Server 2008 / Windows 7, but the instructions are the same for 2000 and 2003.

subinacl.exe command-line tool is probably the only viable and very easy to use from anything in this post. You cant use a GPO with non-system services and the other option is just way way way too complicated.