TBT: Creating a shortcut to start a service

This post originally ran in October 2008. I am reposting it now, as part of my throwback thursday project, to give some of my older quality posts some love. Though the post references Windows XP; the command works in later versions, too.

I’ve finally got my HTPC up and running with Team Mediaportal‘s lovely Media Center replacement Media Portal. One of the issues I faced while getting it up and running, was getting it to work with my MCE Remote. The solution to this was a third-party app called IR Server Suite. Once installed, every function in my MCE Remote worked like a charm. Until I rebooted the computer that is.

For some reason, the service that IR Server Suite uses to override Windows Media Center, and reroute signals to Media Portal, does not start properly. Although I am trying to solve the problem, a more immediately interesting issue is creating a better workaround than having to go to Services and manually start it.

The solution came to me while at work, as I remembered that a few of our servers have services that at times need to be restarted. This is done through shortcuts on the desktop of the server to save time. The shortcut leads to a batch file, using the NET START command. Here’s how my batch file looks like:

@echo off
net start inputservice
exit