Kill service stuck in “Stopping” state

Trying to restart (or stop) a service occasionally ends up with it in a state of “Stopping” that never ends until you reboot. To try and kill it, and avoid the reboot, from the command prompt (run as admin):

sc queryex <servicename>

This will return the process ID of the service. Then run this command to try and kill it:

taskkill /f /pid <id>

Alternatively, or if the above fails, go into Task Manager, click the Services tab and right-click on the offending service and select “Go to process” (Server 2008 and earlier) or “Go to details” (Server 2012 or later) and select End task (or End process) on the highlighted item. With a bit of luck you should now be able to start the service again (unless of course there is something else amiss!)