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I want to change the path to the executable for a service from the command line.

How can I do that?

I want to run another .EXE from that service's path to executable.

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  • 1
    If Dave's answer is not what you need, then please use the "edit" link to explain a bit more?
    – Arjan
    Dec 15, 2010 at 23:13

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
101

You can use the sc config command to change the path a service points to:

SC CONFIG YourServiceName binPath= "C:\SomeDirectory\YourFile.EXE"

This will update the service called YourServiceName and change the "Path to Executable" entry to C:\SomeDirectory\YourFile.EXE. You will want to restart your service afterwards, which you can do with:

NET STOP YourServiceName & NET START YourServiceName
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  • If you are moving MySQL config (.ini) to another drive. You can leave out the inner quotes. Just wrap the entire modified string in a single pair of double quotes. Moved my .ini and data folder to D: drive on Win7.
    – Brian Boatright
    Nov 18, 2011 at 2:10
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    What about when the Path to executable also contains quotes and other parameters? For example: "C:\Program Files\CollabNet\Subversion Server\svnserve.exe" --service -r "E:\Repositories" --listen-port "3690" I sadly had to go the regedit route for this one.
    – James Skemp
    Dec 6, 2011 at 22:14
  • @James - I'm pretty sure you can escape those characters, but I'll have to play around with it and get back to you.
    – LittleBobbyTables - Au Revoir
    Dec 8, 2011 at 3:41
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    Would like to note there is a required space between binpath= and the command. Dumb, I know.
    – Chloe
    Sep 7, 2012 at 16:26
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    Quotes in binPath can be escaped with backslash: \"
    – gwyn
    Mar 21, 2013 at 14:14
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You will need to do that in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services

Navigate to the service, then modify the image name to reflect the new path

As always, make a backup of the system PRIOR.

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  • This worked better for me. The service I was changing had some complex arguments.
    – John Allers
    Jul 10, 2015 at 17:57
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The answer provided above works great, I can't reply to it, but to add up, in case you need to have quotes or other arguments in the path, say to fix an unquoted path vulnerability in the registry, like an imagepath, you can do the following from CMD as admin:

(e.g. for C:\Program Files (x86)\YourService\YourProcess.exe)

SC CONFIG YourService binPath= "\"C:\Program Files (x86)\YourService\YourProcess.exe\"

you can do the following from powershell as admin:

 SC.exe CONFIG YourService binPath= --% "\"C:\Program Files (x86)\YourService\YourProcess.exe\"

These will give you the following result:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\YourService\YourProcess.exe"

...bloody arguments and escaping parameters are a nightmare! Hope this helps someone in the future.

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  • An alternative PowerShell command without the stop-parsing token is SC.exe CREATE YourService binPath= "\`"$env:SERVICE_HOME\bin\srvc.exe\`" -param \`"SOME_PATH\`""
    – honzajscz
    Feb 11, 2022 at 8:47
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You could also do it with PowerShell:

Get-WmiObject win32_service -filter "Name='My Service'" `
    | Invoke-WmiMethod -Name Change `
    -ArgumentList @($null,$null,$null,$null,$null, `
    "C:\Program Files (x86)\My Service\NewName.EXE")

Or:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\My Service" `
    -Name ImagePath -Value "C:\Program Files (x86)\My Service\NewName.EXE"
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  • This is one of those rare cases where I prefer the cmd version better than Powershell. All those $nulls and hardcoded registry paths make me uneasy; it's too easy to miss one, or for that path to be munged somewhere down the line. The cmd method is much cleaner IMO.
    – Max Cascone
    May 26, 2021 at 5:33
  • There's two different ways to do it in this answer. The second example doesn't have the $null parameters that worry you, and it's trivial to replace the hardcoded path with a variable.
    – Greg Sansom
    May 27, 2021 at 4:20
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You can't directly edit your path to execute of a service. For that you can use sc command,

Open your command prompt as administrator then type the following command,

SC CONFIG ServiceName binPath= "Path of your file"

Eg:

sc config MongoDB binPath="I:\Programming\MongoDB\MongoDB\bin\mongod.exe --config I:\Programming\MongoDB\MongoDB\bin\mongod.cfg --service"
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  • :- your looks the same as LittleBobbyTables, if you can detail difference please do. A read of How to Answerand tour are always good every now and then.
    – mic84
    Aug 14, 2018 at 9:41

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