Locally monitoring services up/down on other Windows machines

Question

I have multiple services running on several Windows Server machine on our local network, and I would like to monitor them from my local Windows 7 machine, so I am notified when one or more services are down. Please note that the tool needs to ask Windows about the state of the services, not look at whether e.g. a http port is responsive or not.

I have administrative rights on both machines, but not on the domain. I have the exact names of the services. My machine is not always on. I can write small programs in .NET and big programs in Java.

I'd like something like a permanent version of the Outlook notification pane in the lower right corner.

Does such a thing exist?

Answer 1

Microsoft sysinternals have a tool called PsTools suite, which one of it's components is the PsList:

PsList is part of a growing kit of Sysinternals command-line tools that aid in the adminstration of local and remote systems named PsTools.

Also, "sc.exe" tool can query status of remote computers from your network:

"Using Sc.exe and Netsvc.exe to Control Services Remotely"

Example:

Get a list of Services that are running:
Y:\>sc \\"REMOTE_MACHINE_NAME" query type= service | find "SERVICE_NAME"
SERVICE_NAME: AudioSrv
SERVICE_NAME: Automatic LiveUpdate Scheduler
SERVICE_NAME: BESClient
SERVICE_NAME: CactusXMBService
SERVICE_NAME: ccEvtMgr
SERVICE_NAME: ccProxy
SERVICE_NAME: ccSetMgr