Ironic I was just discussing this subject with one of our DBA’s earlier this week…
I was a bit miffed when I realized there was no longer a SQL Service Manager in SQL 2005 like we had in SQL 2000. I had grown acustomed to having my laptop boot without the SQL service loaded to save resources. When I needed the DB to be fired up, I could just right-click the SQL Service Manager in my system tray and start the service.
Once realizing “damn, it’s not there anymore” I thought about writing my own. I threw the idea on top of my “I wish I had something that did X that I’ll get around to one day, until then hopefully someone else will do it” pile. Thankfully, it’s already been removed as someone did do it: