Manage Windows Services for Exchange Cumulative Updates

Services of third-party software solutions often interfere with installing a new Exchange Server cumulative update because these services have a file lock active. 

To avoid any issues when installing a CU or having the prerequisites check to fail due to open files, you simply stop the Windows services and ensure that those services do not restart automatically. Especially monitoring solutions that use some kind of watchdog service are candidates you must disable for installing an Exchange Server CU.

The following two PowerShell examples help you to prepare the Windows services for installing an Exchange Server CU.

Prepare for CU installation

In preparation for the installation of an Exchange Server cumulative update, you can use the following PowerShell commands.

# Disable and stop services or just stop services
# Add other services as needed# Set SMEX service to manual and stop services
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | Set-Service -StartupType Manual
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force
# Stop SMEX SQL Express instance
Get-Service -Name 'MSSQL*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force
# Disable and stop ENow monitoring services
Get-Service 'ENow*' | Set-Service -StartupType Disabled
Get-Service 'ENow*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force
# Stop NetBackup service
Get-Service -Name 'NetBackup*' | ?{$_.Status -eq 'Running'} | Stop-Service -Force

Post CU installation

After installing the Exchange Server cumulative update you should restart your computer. I recommend initiating a check for additional Windows Updates for the CU. This helps to ensure that you do not only have the latest CU installed, but required security updates as well.

# Enabling and starting services
# Adjust the list of services as needed
# Enable and start SMEX services
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Get-Service -Name 'ScanMail*' | Start-Service
# Enable and start ENow Monitoring services
Get-Service -Name 'ENow*' | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
Get-Service -Name 'ENow*' | Start-Service

Enjoy Exchange Server.