How do I figure out the display name of a Windows service from its "short" name?

The Windows Event Viewer typically logs only the abbreviated service name, but the Services console lists services alphabetically by their full "Display Name".

If the "Display Name" isn't obvious from the shortened service name, how do I figure out what a service is from its short name? Obviously, I could open up the properties page of every service in the Services console, but there must be a better way.

Solution 1:

Try, on the command line:

sc query

and look through that. You could >redirect to a file, as so:

sc query > output.txt

and use a text editor to search through it (And seeing as this creates a comprehensive list of processes, you could keep it around)

Bonus point: If you have a version of grep installed, either from cygwin, or unxutils, or wherever, try:

sc query | grep -i -A 1 "short name"

trying this with uxsms, the DWM service, I get

SERVICE_NAME: UxSms
DISPLAY_NAME: Desktop Window Manager Session Manager

To create a nice listing, you could use

sc query | grep -A 1 "SERVICE_NAME" > Services.txt

Solution 2:

A simpler and direct way from the command line is:

sc GetDisplayName SERVICE_NAME

Example

The short name for the service behind Windows Update is wuauserv. Thus, the display name can be found as:

sc GetDisplayName wuauserv

Window XP

On Windows XP this results in (output in one line):

[SC] GetServiceDisplayName SUCCESS Name = Automatic Updates

Window 7

On Windows 7 this results in (output in two lines):

[SC] GetServiceDisplayName SUCCESS
Name = Windows Update

Note that the Services console name of the service in this case is different for Windows XP and Window 7 ("Automatic Updates" vs. "Windows Update").