When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn What Does Service Control Manager Mean?
Service Control Manager (SCM) is a special process under the Windows NT family of operating systems that starts and stops Windows processes, including device drivers and startup programs. Its main function is to start all the required services at system startup. It is launched by the Winint process on system boot.
Techopedia Explains Service Control Manager
Service Control Manager is a process started on Windows NT-based operating systems that launches the various Windows services. These services include device drivers and other various housekeeping tasks. SCM is similar to the init process on Unix-like systems that launches the various system daemons, or the newer systemd init system used on modern Linux distributions.
At boot time, SCM is launched by Wininit. Microsoft provides an API that allows developers to write their own Windows services and have them launched by SCM.
