I don't plan to leave this site for another year without pulling out something new out of my sleeve.
For some time now, I needed a service capable of launching an external program so it can be run in the background.
I found no freeware program that could satisfy my needs I so decided to make my own.
Launcher Service runs as a Windows 2000/XP (and probably Windows 2003/Vista) service. It allows to control
the launch of a program, even if a GUI needs to be displayed for the user.
It can keep the program stopped when the Internet connection is down and when the computer enters in hibernation state.
More importantly, it can restart the program if it crashes somehow; and stop the program nicely when the user decides to
stop the service, or if the launched program quits because it has nothing more to do.
To stop programs (even console programs) properly was one of the features that worried me the most: it doesn't seem to be implemented
properly in similar programs I tried so far. If you're a developer, you are welcomed to check the source (as long as you
follow the license statements), as I hope to have a working implementation.
You can check the
rest of the features and download this GNU GPL'ed
program, as usual, from the
Projects Page.