Service Exit Code 1077 and false negatives

This is not a trick question, but what is the Windows Exit Code 1077?

In the Microsoft Windows documentation the details related to this Exit Code are

No attempts to start the service have been made since the last boot.

ERROR_SERVICE_NEVER_STARTED

I’m writing some Powershell script to review Windows services which failed to start and I’m getting loads of rows of services with Exit Code 1077 and the Windows service is stopped.

Answer: As the documented definition states “No attempts to start the service have been made since the last boot” . Therefore there is no failure in this case. If you are writing a Powershell script to report on Windows services attempting to start but failing than EXCLUDE services with an EXIT CODE of 1077.

You can check this out for yourself. Open a Powershell command window and execute Get-Service. This will list all the services on a Windows server. Find one which is Stopped and execute. If it returns Exit Code 1077 than this service should not be included in Windows services failing to start

Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Service -Filter "Name='MyService'"

ExitCode  : 1077
Name      : MyService
ProcessId : 0
StartMode : Manual
State     : Stopped
Status    : OK

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