Disabling SBSCore Service on Windows Home Server
The Small Business Server Core Services (SBCore) that come preinstalled with Windows Home Server prevent the server from effectively running Active Directory, joining an existing domain and sleeping for prolonged periods of time by periodically shutting it down or restarting it. The service itself cannot be disabled in the Services Manager, and it will restart itself if the process is terminated through Task Manager.
Prerequisites
You need to have the following on your Windows Home Server:
- Download and install Microsoft’s Process Explorer
Solution
The first step is to suspend the SBCore service process in Process Explorer:
- Launch Process Explorer
- Right-click sbscrexe.exe and select Suspend
Once the process is suspended, the service can be disabled in the registry:
- Launch the registry editor (Start → Run… → regedit)
- Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\SBCore
- Right-click the key and select Permissions…
- Add the local Administrators group, give it Full Control and press OK
- Press F5 to refresh the view and show all the values under that key
- Double-click the Start value
- Change the Value data field from 2 to 4 to disable the service
- Close regedit
In order to prevent the service from restarting itself, perform the following steps:
- Open Windows Explorer and navigate to C:\Windows\System32\
- Right-click sbscrexe.exe and select Properties
- Select the Security tab
- Add the Everyone group, Deny all access and ignore the warnings
Last but not least, terminate the suspended process in Process Explorer:
- Right-click sbscrexe.exe and select Kill Process
The SBCore service should now longer be running or restarting itself.
Related Resources
The solution was first discussed in a Speed Guide Forum post in the context of Small Business Server 2003, from which Windows Home Server inherits some of its functionality.
What is SBCore? is a related discussion on the Microsoft forums.