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Accepted
Jürgen Steinblock
Asked: 2010-09-09 04:36:36 +0800 CST

Change Windows Service Priority

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I have a windows service that needs to run with High Priority.
At the end of the day I want to use this script to modify the priority after service startup:

Const HIGH = 256

strComputer = "."
strProcess = "BntCapi2.exe"

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colProcesses = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    ("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = '" & strProcess & "'")

For Each objProcess in colProcesses
    objProcess.SetPriority(HIGH)
Next

But currently I am not able to change the priority, even with the taskmanger. The taskmananger throws an "Access Denied" error, but I am logged on as administrator and I changed the user account of the service to administrator, too.

I still get the "access denied" message when trying to change the priority. Any ideas what permission I need to do that?

windows-service windows-server-2003 wmi process-priority

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I found a way to do this in this blog: http://akshayjain.org/blog/2008/08/hack-unable-to-change-priority-in-task-manager/

    If I run this command

    ntsd -c qd taskmgr.exe

    the taskmanager starts with system privileges and I am able to change the process priority. That means that my wsh script can do this, too. I created a batch file

    @ECHO OFF
ntsd -c qd cscript.exe set_service_priority.vbs

    and now the process priority get's modified, like I wanted.

    Initially I couldn't change process priority because the service ran under the system account. The strange thing is that, even after changing the service user to administrator (that's me ;) I got the "access denied" message. But with this trick that works like a charm.

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  2. You might need to add the following to the top of your script:

    Set objLoc = createobject("wbemscripting.swbemlocator")
objLoc.Security_.privileges.addasstring "sedebugprivilege", true

    Although.. I wouldn't want to use anything above 128.. (256 = Realtime)

    Full list here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa393587.aspx

    • 1

  3. http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=69381

    wmic process where name="notepad.exe" CALL setpriority 32768

    Idle: 64 Below Normal: 16384 Normal: 32 Above Normal: 32768 High Priority: 128 Real Time: 256

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