The Delayed Auto-start Flag Could Not Be Set

We all know that services are the important components of Windows operating system. Most of the Windows features relies only on background services and in the absence of root service the parts of or the program/app will not work. It is highly recommended that you set the services to their most favourable Startup type.

However, sometimes you may not be able to change the Startup type of services to specific level. For example, recently I tried to change the Startup type of Windows Update service to Automatic (Delayed) and I got following error:

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The delayed auto-start flag could not be set.
Error 5: Access is denied.

The Delayed Auto-start Flag Could Not Be Set

If you are also facing this issue, then here is what you can do to fix it.

The Delayed Auto-start Flag Could Not Be Set

Usually, some services belongs to some groups. They should be started in a specific order. The group, of which the service is a member, controls the start behaviour for that service. As the services should be started in a specific order, hence delaying a service specifically can break the order and affect other services too. Due to this reason, some services cannot be set to delayed Startup type. To resolve this problem, you need to move the service out of the group but that is much risky and you should avoid doing that.

The reason behind this is clear and straight forward, that if you move the service out of the group it may not be able to perform as desired. You can experience unexpected behaviours with that service and that will create more trouble than doing anything good. Hence if you cannot set the Automatic (Delayed) Startup type, you can either set the service to Manual or Automatic start-up type. Doing so will be of course be easy and won’t counter any error. Remember, that you won’t see this error for each service and some of them may allow Delayed start.

That’s it!