That’s very odd. I have the most up-to-date Bot Agent installed and I can still see the service.

Try using the following batch file to stop and start the service. You will need to run it as Administrator.

net stop "Automation Anywhere Bot Agent"
net start "Automation Anywhere Bot Agent"

Thanks Aaron,  Yes it is very strange.  I’m able to run automations so it seems even more strange.  When I try your recommendation I get an error 

C:\WINDOWS\system32>net stop "Automation Anywhere Bot Agent"
The service name is invalid.

Can automations run without the service running?

The only way automations could run without having the Bot Agent installed on your computer is if you have Enterprise Edition and connect to another computer’s Bot Agent. That would run the automation on the other computer.

My thought is that your IT department has something to do with this, if this is a managed PC.

Another thought is to uninstall the Bot Agent (it’s showing up in your installed applications, right?), nuke the folders (listed below), and reinstall the Bot Agent.

c:\windows\system32\config\systemprofile\appdata\local\automationanywhere\

c:\programdata\automationanywhere\

Some of these folders are hidden/need admin access.

I am on a managed PC, so that is certainly possible.  

However, I took your advice and removed and reinstalled the new bot agent and now I do see the service again.  It must have been some glitch during the initial install. Still weird that it was working but I couldn’t see the service.

Thanks for your help.

Unfortunately, on the first run of an automation now that I can see the service (not sure that matters) the automation is stuck in the ‘Connecting to device’ action.  I can’t delete the device and I can’t cancel te automation so I’m  dead in the water.

This is community edition and this happened to a bunch of users a few months back on an upgrade.  If I remember correctly, we were all stuck until something was done on the control room to fix the issue. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled the bot agent, logged on and off the control room and the pending bot execution is still stuck there.

Was there ever a fix for this?

Try this page that I made:

https://rpademo.automationanywhere.com/deletedevice.php

Thanks Aaron.  That page is super helpful.  Is that using an API call behind the scenes? Is there a reason AA doesn’t provide that functionality in the community UI?

In any event, I really appreciate the assistance.

Yes, it uses three API calls to make this happen. I’m not sure why this isn’t present in ANY version of our software, but there it is. 

Happy to assist!