The Services Status grid shows the current status of each SQL Server support service.
The columns in the grid are:
Service
The SQL Server support service.
State
The state of the SQL Server support service.
Active - The service is running.
Inactive - The service is found and not running.
Not installed - The service is not found. It is not installed.
Configured / Not Configured - These states are applicable only when the instance is NOT linked to a Windows operating system.
Note: SQL Mail and SQL Agent Mail are included for consistency and given state Not configured.
State Changed
The time and date that the state of the service last changed.
Note: The value of State Changed is 0 when the instance is linked to a Windows operating system and the status is Inactive or Not installed.
How to start and stop services
To start and stop services, right-click a service and select the appropriate option from the shortcut menu.
The start/stop service feature is fully cluster aware. If your server is running on a cluster, the start/stop service function requests that the cluster software take the cluster resource offline, rather than just stopping the service manually. This prevents the cluster service from failing the resource over to another node.
Note: To use the Start and Stop options when connected to SQL Server 2005, in addition to the Spotlight user being a member of the Spotlight Diagnostics Administrators group, the Diagnostic Server must be connected to the SQL Server as a sysadmin level user and xp_cmdshell must be enabled on the SQL Server. If the Diagnostic Server is not connected as a sysadmin user and /or xp_cmdshell is disabled, the Start and Stop options will not perform the expected service control actions when they are used.
Note: SQL Mail and SQL Agent Mail are not services and cannot be started or stopped. The Support Service Status panel displays their current configuration status only.