Starting Apache fails without error - apache

Question

I have an Apache service 'SERV[XYZ]' in my Windows services and I would like to be able to start it from a PowerShell script.
In the script, I added variable holding service name:
$serv = "SERV[XYZ]";
stop-service $serv;
start-service $serv;
but this does not start the service. PowerShell executes without error.

Answer 1

The *-Service cmdlets do wildcard matches on the service name. See for instance the documentation of Start-Service:
Parameters
-DisplayName<String[]>
Specifies the display names of the services to be started. Wildcards are permitted.
The pattern [XYZ] means "match any of the characters X, Y, or Z" (like in regular expressions), so your statements try to stop/start services named SERVX, SERVY and/or SERVZ. To match a literal string [XYZ] you need to prevent the square brackets from being treated as special characters, e.g. like this:
$serv = 'SERV[[]XYZ[]]'
Stop-Service $serv
Start-Service $serv
If you have only one service whose name starts with SERV you could also use a pattern like SERV*, or perhaps SERV?XYZ? where the ? (wildcard matching a single character) mask the square brackets.
Another option would be to use Get-Service without a name and filter the results via Where-Object:
$serv = 'SERV[XYZ]'
Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq $serv } | Stop-Service
Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.Name -eq $serv } | Start-Service