First you need to install excellent Python for Windows extensions (pywin32) by Mark Hammond from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/. Then you can use the following code (that will restart the Print Spooler service). import win32serviceutil serviceName = "spooler" win32serviceutil.RestartService(serviceName) Note: this code was tested with Python 2.7 and version 216 of the pywin32 extensions.