Restarting a Remote Service (VBScript vs PowerShell)

This kind of goes along with my rants about PowerShell examples being pretty much reformatted VBScript WMI code examples, but regardless, PowerShell does provide a more abbreviated code environment.  The PowerShell code example was derived from a posting by Thomas Lee on the PowerShell blog on restarting a DNS service on a remote computer.  I had a VBScript example which does the same with the Spooler service, so I simply adapted Thomas’ code to support and apples-to-apples comparison.  As you can see, they are very similar.  In fact, the KiXtart version looks almost identical to both as well.

VBScript Example

strComputer = "server1" 
wscript.echo "Restarting Spooler Service on: ",strComputer

Set wmi = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\CIMV2") 
Set ret = wmi.ExecMethod("Win32_Service.Name='Spooler'", "StopService")
If ret.ReturnValue = 0 Then
    wscript.echo "Spooler Service stopped"
Else
    wscript.echo "Spooler Service not stopped"
End If

Set ret = wmi.ExecMethod("Win32_Service.Name='Spooler '", "StartService")
If ret.ReturnValue = 0 Then
    wscript.echo "Spooler Service started"
Else
    wscript.echo "Spooler Service not started"
End If

PowerShell Example

$strComputer = "server1" 
"Restarting Spooler Service on: $strComputer" 
  
# get the service object
$svc = gwmi Win32_Service -computer $strComputer | where {$_.name -eq "Spooler"} 
  
# stop the service
$ret = $svc.StopService() 
if ($ret.ReturnValue -eq 0) {"Spooler Service stopped"} 
else {"Spooler Service not stopped"} 
  
# start the service
$ret = $svc.StartService() 
if ($ret.ReturnValue -eq 0) {"Spooler Service started"} 
else {"Spooler Service not started"}