Skip to main content
< All Topics
Print

The specified service has been marked for deletion

Posted
Updated
Bychris_fry

You may face a problem to delete Windows service using sc command. You may get a message “The specified service has been marked for deletion – DeleteService failed 1072″ error.

When you try to remove a Windows Service with sc delete <service name>, you may encounter the following error:

[SC] DeleteService FAILED 1072:
The specified service has been marked for deletion.

Following is the exact screen capture of the error message:

Specified service has been marked for deletion

There are several reasons for this error. Today we will discuss the possible causes of this issue and how can we resolve this error. Following are the list of reasons which can cause this error:

[1] Microsoft Management Console (MMC)

If MMC (Microsoft Management Console) is opened, close all instances of MMC and run the following command to kill it:

taskkill /F /IM mmc.exe

[2] Services console is opened. This is the same as the previous point, since Services console is hosted by MMC. Follow the step [1] after closing MMC.

[3] Event Viewer is opened. MMC is being used when you open Event Viewer.

[4] Process Explorer is opened. If it is causing the issue, closing it should lead to automatic removal of the service.

[5] Task Manager is opened.

Close any of the above running process and try again to delete service. If you still face the problem, there may be other issues as well which require further investigation. Hope this will help you to resolve “DeleteService FAILED 1072” or “The specified service has been marked for deletion“.