I could not remote onto this customers database-server so looked at my local machines and found the ‘short name’ for the SQLAgent service was ‘SQLAgent$sql2014’.
I recognized the last bit (‘~sql2014’) as my local instance so was able to surmise this code would work for the customer (if there instance was called ‘SomeInstanceName’).
exec xp_cmdshell ‘net start SQLAgent$SomeInstanceName’
** UPDATE **
When a colleague locked up a dev server I was able to free it by restarting the service like this …
xp_cmdshell ‘net start’ — to get list of services
xp_cmdshell ‘net stop “SQL Server Agent (DEV2008r”)”‘ — to stop the agent service in preparation for the next step
xp_cmdshell ‘net stop “SQL Server (DEV2008r2)”‘ — to stop the SQL Server Service NOTE: double-quotes
xp_cmdshell ‘net start “SQL Server (DEV2008r2)”‘
xp_cmdshell ‘net start “SQL Server Agent (DEV2008r2)”‘
Database Consultant 