There are some important programs such as a gaming servers, webservers,
databases or mail servers that we’d need to keep running at all times
but not every piece of software will have a feature of monitoring itself
and re-starting whenever it is closed. It’s a similar situation if you
constantly download via P2P software or download managers because you might want to keep downloading or seeding even while you’re not at the computer.
It can be a source of frustration if the software crashes or hangs
just after you leave it unattended because it will then have to stay
that way until you come back to rectify the problem. What could be even
more annoying is having other users or children closing the program down
not knowing or caring that it’s supposed to stay running. This is where
a third part tool comes in to help because you can setup your programs
that are required to stay running to relaunch automatically if they are
closed or crash. That way they will keep restarting to continue their
tasks or until you stop them manually.
Here’s a selection of
8 free tools that can keep an application running
by automatically starting it up again when it closes or crashes.
1. Control Running Programs (CRP)
Control
Running Programs is a multi functional tool to perform a number of
functions on running applications. In addition to being able to monitor
and relaunch closed processes,
CRP can control how many instances of a
program can be opened at once and also monitor the memory usage of a
program, closing it down if a certain threshold is reached. An
additional option can password protect the main window once it’s been
minimized to the tray.
After
installation, click on Instance Launching in the window and click on
Add (or
File menu -> Add), or alternatively drop an executable onto
the window (
not a shortcut). Then click the button to browse for an
executable or use the arrow button to select a currently running
process, and supply optional command line arguments. Once you have
configured the program(s) required press the button to start the
monitoring engine. You can’t launch different programs or set a
monitoring interval etc, but simply dropping a file onto the window
makes
CRP very easy to get working quickly.
Download Control Running Program (CRP)
2. Application Monitor
Application
monitor is quite an old utility dating back to
2005, but seems to work
perfectly fine on newer operating systems. It has a couple of useful
options built in you don’t find in many other tools of this type,
including an option to send an email when errors occur and the ability
to use different checking intervals for each application you want the
program to monitor.
Adding
a process to monitor is easy, click the Add button, give it a name and
then browse to the executable file. Then add optional arguments and set
the checking interval, the default is
2 minutes but it can be any where
between
30 seconds and
3 hours in
30 second increments. As soon as you
tick the box to activate the application profile, it will launch the
process and begin monitoring. Application monitor is portable and
requires .
NET Framework 1.1 or higher.
Download Application Monitor
3. Restart On Crash
Restart
On Crash is slightly different because it was designed primarily as a
tool to restart a program after it’s crashed or hung, but is equally at
home in restarting an application that has been closed accidentally or
by someone else. It’s an easy program to use and configure while being
portable and quite light on memory, only using around
2.5MB of system
RAM during monitoring.
When
configuring
Restart On Crash you can assume a program has crashed and
needs restarting when it has actually crashed and not responding, and
also simply if it isn’t running which covers when the the application
was closed manually. Click the Add button to enter a new monitored
application and either locate the executable or select a running
process, this will enter the same executable in the command to execute.
You can of course run scripts or other programs if you want. By default
closed/crashed programs are checked every
60 seconds, this can be
changed and the log file can be setup from the Settings window.
Download Restart On Crash
4. Restarter
According
to its developer, Restarter was originally intended for monitoring and
restarting Counter-Strike game servers, but can be used on other
applications with no problem. The main interface is a bit more
complicated looking than some of the other tools here, but still isn’t
really that difficult to configure. Restarter has portable and setup
installer versions available and requires .
NET Framework v
2 to function.
To
monitor a program it first needs to be running as Restarter selects the
executable from a list of opened processes, then you can choose the
monitor interval (
default is 60 seconds), whether to restart the
process, kill an unresponsive process, play a warning sound and run an
external script (
reboot and send email VBS scripts are included).
Supplying a working directory and startup arguments are optional extras.
Restarter has a Create shortcut button which will add a desktop
shortcut to allow launching the selected application and then monitor it
automatically.
Download Restarter
5. Keep Running
Keep Running is a tiny utility
that will automatically relaunch a program after it’s closed. It’s a
very small
36KB portable executable but the downside is there’s no user
interface to make configuration easier. Instead you have to manually
edit the accompanying keeprun.ini file with
Notepad or Notepad++
and enter the path to the executable you want to monitor and the
application to launch once the monitored program has been closed.
Thankfully
the settings INI file only has
6 configuration options which are easy
enough to understand. Detect is the full path of the executable that you
want to watch for closing and Launch is the full path to the program
you want to run if the Detect program closes. Note that you should NOT
provide quotes in the path even if it contains spaces. Start will launch
the given program when you start
Keep Running. This program is a handy
tool to keep an application running because there is no way for other
users to close
Keep Running unless you kill the process from
Task
Manager.
Download Keep Running
6. ProcessAlive
ProcessAlive is by Singular Labs who also produce the
JavaRa and
CCEnhancer
utilities and is a simple and easy to use tool to keep programs running
by restating them if the process closes for some reason. The basic user
interface keeps options to a minimum and about the only configuration
you need to decide is whether to start ProcessAlive with Windows and
saving the list of programs to an ini file.
All
you have to do is click the Add program button and browse for the
executable file. A small popup window will then give the option to add
command line arguments or run the executable directly. Click the “Keep
these programs alive” button to begin the monitoring. Right clicking on
the ProcessAlive tray icon will show an option to change the frequency
of the checks in Milliseconds, default is
0. A couple of minor gripes
are slightly high memory usage of
15-30MB while monitoring and the Stop
button doesn’t appear to work from the GUI, you have to use the tray
icon to stop monitoring. ProcessAlive is a portable standalone
executable.
Download ProcessAlive
7. ReStartMe
ReStartMe
has a small but possibly useful feature that none of the other tools
here have, which is to password protect the configuration window so
other users can’t just go and turn the option to keep restarting an
application off. It’s not foolproof though and more knowledgeable users
can simply kill the process in Task Manager, but it might deter average
users and kids from tampering with the settings.
Apart
from setting the optional locking password and choosing what process
state to remember between uses, there really isn’t anything else to
configure as such. You simply click on “
Add a process” and browse for an
executable or click on the drop down menu and select a running process.
Once added, the program will automatically launch if it isn’t running
already, and then
ReStartMe can be minimized to the tray. There is no
delay interval for checking a closed process and it will be restarted
almost instantly.
Download ReStartMe
8. ServiceEx
ServiceEx
is a tool that allows you to run a normal program as a Windows service
and if your chosen process is closed, the service will restart itself
automatically. Although this method is quite useful, it is best used on
programs that don’t have user interfaces and instead perhaps run in the
background. ServiceEx is a command line only tool and like Keep Running
makes use of an ini file to store the settings for configuring the
service.
Installing
a ServiceEx service isn’t too difficult, edit the .ini file which can
be downloaded from the website and enter the path to the executable on
the ServiceExeFullPath line and optional arguments on the Options line.
Then save the file as {
service name}.ini in the same folder as the
ServiceEx.exe file. Open a Command Prompt,
CD to the ServiceEx folder
and run the command “
ServiceEx.exe install {
service name}”. This will
install and start the service under the name given and if for any reason
the process closes, it will auto start again immediately.
Download ServiceEx
