How to troubleshoot a Windows 10 service which does not let me stop it

I am trying to set the "DNS Client" service (also called dnscache) in Windows 10 to DISABLED.

However, when I enter into the services control for Windows the options to manipulate it are all "greyed out".

I have also tried to terminate it from the Task Manager, but it throws up an error message saying that it is a matter of "access denied" (I'm running in a test box, as the sole administrative user).

I have also attempted to kill it from the command line as such: taskkill /F /PID 3953 Doing this successfully kills the service but only for a split second! It then reappears immediately under a new PID.

How can I set the DNS Client (dnscache) to being disabled?

Jack Feschuk

Posted 2017-12-17T19:52:04.337

Reputation: 133

So what is it that you’re actually trying to accomplish? Disabling the Windows DNS resolver isn’t exactly going to solve anything. – Daniel B – 2017-12-17T20:27:39.117

This service can definitely be stopped. Are you running Task Manager or the services console as administrator? – Patrick Seymour – 2017-12-17T20:28:05.297

Answers

Note that the DNS Client does more than just cache DNS records - it gets them in the first place, so disabling it may limit internet access.

If you still decide to disable it, do this :

Use regedit to navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Dnscache,
Locate the Start registry key and change its value from 2 (Automatic) to 4 (Disabled)
Reboot.

Another method is :

Start a Command prompt (cmd) as SYSTEM (psexec -sid cmd.exe)
Launch services.msc from it
The Startup type drop-down now becomes enabled.

harrymc

Posted 2017-12-17T19:52:04.337

Reputation: 306 093

Thank you very much for this detailed explanation. I have disabled it via the registry editor now. Further: I am testing some custom DNS settings locally so this service was interfering. – Jack Feschuk – 2017-12-17T22:34:55.543

2Damn. Now that I've upgraded to Windows 10 Version 1803, I'm having this problem where I can't stop or restart the "DNS Client" service. Although your answer looked promising, launching services.msc as Admin (or from running .\PsExec64.exe -sid cmd.exe and then services.msc) doesn't seem to help me. – Ryan – 2018-08-10T23:39:54.527

1@Ryan confirmed. This does not work with recent upgrades to Windows, even when posing as local system via the psexec trick. – 0xC0000022L – 2019-06-24T09:25:02.510

Also noticed that apparently without the DNS Client service (dnscache) the DNS suffix list is no longer shown in ipconfig /all. Not sure whether it still takes effect, though. – 0xC0000022L – 2019-06-24T10:09:43.630

This does not explain why the options are greyed out, and how to un-grey them, though, so: sort of useful, but how does one fix this problem instead of working around it via the registry? – Mike 'Pomax' Kamermans – 2020-02-18T00:29:54.500

In addition to harrymc's answer, I found this while searching for the same problem :

Deactivate :

REG add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Dnscache" /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 4 /f

Automatic mode :

REG add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\Dnscache" /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 2 /f

Source : https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/a04284f9-cf27-4f37-82fe-31255f70625f/how-to-disable-windows-10-dns-cache-services?forum=win10itpronetworking

Benj

Posted 2017-12-17T19:52:04.337

Reputation: 201