Poweshell installing/uninstalling windows services on a remote machine

Question

I am using powershell 1.0 and I need to install a service on a remote machine and first uninstall it if it exists.

This is my script I have that installs the service, however, I seem unable to uninstall the service. I have tried installutil however the service path is a network path which installutil, throws errors over.

I'm a complete newbie with powershell, however, I'm sure there must be a better and cleaner way of approaching this.

$class = "Win32_Service"
$method = "Create"
$mc = [wmiclass]"\\DUMMYServer\ROOT\CIMV2:$class"
$inparams = $mc.PSBase.GetMethodParameters($method)
$inparams.DesktopInteract = $false
$inparams.DisplayName = "DummyService"
$inparams.ErrorControl = 0
$inparams.LoadOrderGroup = $null
$inparams.LoadOrderGroupDependencies = $null
$inparams.Name = "DummyMessageService"
$inparams.PathName = '\\DummyServer\c$\Applications\DummyMessageWindowsService\DummyWindowsService.exe'
$inparams.ServiceDependencies = $null
$inparams.ServiceType = 16
$inparams.StartMode = "Automatic"
$inparams.StartName = $null # will start as localsystem builtin if null
$inparams.StartPassword = $null

$result = $mc.PSBase.InvokeMethod($method,$inparams,$null)
$result | Format-List

Answer 1

If you're stuck on PowerShell 1.0, check out psexec which will allow you to run installutil.exe on the remote machine. If you were on PowerShell 2.0 on both the local and remote machines, you could use remoting to run installutil.exe on the remote machine.