Services Console Reconfiguration

So John Bassett and I were working at a client today, complaining about how often we had to go into the Services console and how bad the default settings were.  Every time you open the Services console the default view is Extended instead of Standard, the Window is mis-sized, and the columns are squished.

It looks something like this, which is pretty useless:


Figure 1 Services console default

My first move is usually to select the Standard tab and then resize the first column. Doing this every time is a hassle, so I found a way to set the default to the Standard tab and have it sized appropriately every time I open the Services console.

1- Find the Services console in Administrative Tools or as services.msc in the %SystemRoot%\system32 folder. (Usually C:\Windows\system32\services.msc)

2- Right-click and select 'Author'

3- Make the changes you desire i.e. Resize the window, change to the 'Standard' tab, resize the 'Name' column, etc.

4- Close the window, saving the changes when prompted

5- Re-open the services console either by double-clicking services.msc or selecting the menu item 'Services' from Administrative Tools and check your changes


Figure 2 Services console reconfigured

Every time you open the services console on that server in the future it will appear as you configured it. Also, you can copy services.msc from server to server if you wish.