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How to Run your Application Every Minute with AlwaysUp

Do you want to run a script or application every minute? And have you decided that creating an AlwaysUp Windows Service will be better than using the built-in Windows Task Scheduler? If yes, here are the key settings to specify with AlwaysUp.

Wait One Minute Before Restarting

By default, AlwaysUp will immediately restart your application whenever it exits. To have AlwaysUp “pause” for a minute before restarting, make the following changes on the Restart tab:

  • Select the Not immediately option

  • Choose the After option

  • Enter 1 minute in the controls to the right

Avoid Verbose Event Logging on each Run/Restart

AlwaysUp is designed to record detailed information whenever your application exits and has to be restarted. This is often useful information for applications that should run continuously but the logging can become overwhelming when your application is stopping and restarting every minute!

Check the Minimize event logging as the application stops & starts on the Restart tab to avoid extra chatter as your application/script cycles each minute.

Other Recommendations

If you are interested in email notifications, be sure NOT to check the Whenever the application stops and has to be restarted box on the Email tab! If you do, expect to be inundated with emails as your application goes up and down every minute.

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My Dropbox Windows Service no longer works after Updating Dropbox – Help!

Recently, a few of our customers running Dropbox as a windows service with AlwaysUp have reported failures after manually updating to the latest version of Dropbox. These are happening because Dropbox changes the location of its executable file during the update. Let’s dig into the details and see how to fix the problem.

The Old Dropbox Location

Prior to version 3.5.58, released in April 2015, Dropbox stored its application executable file (Dropbox.exe) in a user-specific folder. If you installed Dropbox in the Administrator account, you could find the file in C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin:

Dropbox application folder

The New Dropbox Location

If you install a fresh copy of version 3.5.58 or later, you will notice that Dropbox.exe now lives underneath the Program Files folder, in C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client (or C:\Program Files\Dropbox\Client on 32-bit versions of Windows):

Dropbox new location

We have already noted the new location in our step-by-step tutorial to guide future customers, but the story is more complicated for existing installations…

Upgrading Dropbox Changes its Location (and Breaks your AlwaysUp Configuration)

Unfortunately the impact of this change to the file locations isn’t limited to new installations. Manually updating an existing Dropbox installation will cause the files to be moved to the new folder. This isn’t a problem for Dropbox itself, but since AlwaysUp is blissfully unaware of the change, it will continue to run Dropbox.exe from its old location (as you originally specified in the Application field on the General tab):

AlwaysUp General tab - the old location

Because the executable is no longer present there, AlwaysUp will fail to start Dropbox and report errors like this:

AlwaysUp fails to start Dropbox

The Fix: Set the New Dropbox Location in AlwaysUp

Fortunately normal operation can be restored quite easily. Simply edit Dropbox in AlwaysUp and update the Application field on the General tab to specify the new path to the Dropbox executable (C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe):

Update the path to Dropbox

Save your settings and AlwaysUp should be able to start Dropbox normally again!

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Essential Tools for Windows Services: Task Manager

We all know to fire up the Windows Task Manager when we want to terminate a process, see how much memory is being used or find that rogue program hogging the CPU, but do you know that Task Manager also shows important details of Windows Services? For some situations, the Task Manager, with its focus on what is actually running on the PC, is even more useful than the standard Services Control Panel!

Information about your PC’s services can be found in the Task Manager’s Services tab. If you don’t see any tabs across the top of the Task Manager window, click the More details link at the bottom to reveal them:

The services table shows all the windows services installed on your PC. Helpful columns show the description, status and group of each service. And, perhaps most importantly, services that are running will show the numeric process identifier (PID) of the process hosting the service. That PID is useful when you want to terminate an unresponsive service, boost its priority or perform other low-level operations.

Right-click an entry to summon the context menu offering several operations you can perform on the service:

Start, Stop or Restart your Windows Service

Take action on your service right here! No need to open services.msc, or run the NET START or NET STOP commands from a prompt.

Open Services

Selecting this entry will open the Windows Services Control Panel. Note that you can also open Services by clicking on the Open Services link at the bottom of the window.

Search online

Choosing this entry opens your browser and searches for the service’s name and display name. For example, if you have selected the service named Spooler with display name Print Spooler, selecting “Search online” will open your browser and launch a convenient Bing search (or Google, if that is your default search engine) for Spooler Print Spooler:

Go to details

Selecting this entry, which is only available when your service is running, switches you to the Task Manager’s Details tab with the service’s underlying process highlighted.

For example, here is the VirtualBox service (VBoxService) running with PID 624 as we select “Go to details”:

We are immediately transported to the Details tab to provide us with more information on the process with PID 624 (named VBoxService.exe):

As you can see, Task Manager provides some decent tools for controlling your windows services. Be sure to fire it up next time you have to work with a service!

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“AlwaysUp Powers our Mission Critical Application in Hospital Emergency Departments”

Customer spotlight     Wellsoft EDIS – real world solutions for your Emergency Department

Wellsoft Corporation, developer and provider of the industry-leading Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) since 1990, is consistently ranked #1 in KLAS user surveys of EDIS time and again. Recognized for providing the most complete functionality and most configurable product on the market, Wellsoft is the specialist in Emergency Department Information Systems.

Wellsoft has been including AlwaysUp for its clients since 2007.

Why does Wellsoft use AlwaysUp for all implementations?

  Wellsoft’s Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) is a mission critical application for hospital emergency departments. The software must operate 24 hours a day, with unparalleled availability and reliability. AlwaysUp helps us maintain superior uptimes for clients by:

  1. Automatically starting the Wellsoft application if the server is rebooted
  2. Automatically restarting the application if the server hangs or uses too much memory
  3. Restarting instances of Wellsoft during routine Microsoft memory or CPU spikes that close a running copy
  4. Sending email alerts to report potential problems and support our IT staff

We selected AlwaysUp based on its feature set, simplicity and cost — it was the best solution for our clients.

How are you using AlwaysUp today?

  AlwaysUp is a required part of every implementation of Wellsoft EDIS. To date, we manage over 70 licenses of AlwaysUp in various versions.

What are your favorite features of AlwaysUp?

  For Wellsoft: The ease of use, immediate notifications and customer service are right at the top of the list. When we do require assistance, the level of support from Core Technologies is unrivaled.

For our clients: Ease of use; we have found that even our least “techy” clients can use the information provided by AlwaysUp to determine what they can handle and when they need to involve Wellsoft.

Any other comments on working with our company, support, etc?

  Yes! We recently used the Activity Report feature to help us locate a memory issue that was causing several of our clients to experience program disruptions. We were able to narrow our focus thanks to AlwaysUp’s weekly statistics, saving us incalculable time.

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AlwaysUp Works Well on Windows 10 (but no keyboard or mouse in Session 0)


Testing AlwaysUp on Windows 10

Our month-long evaluation of AlwaysUp 9.1 running windows services on Windows 10 started soon after the new operating system was released on July 29th. Testing was comprehensive, targeting all major features including:

  • Installation & setup
  • Sending emails in response to key events
  • Running programs in the background in Session 0
  • Starting applications interactively in the current session
  • Restarting an application if it uses too much memory
  • Detecting CPU spikes
  • Responding to customized failure detection scripts (“sanity checks”)
  • Automation in the current session with AutoIt
  • Interaction with other windows services installed on the PC

… and much more.

We also focused on running popular applications that have already earned compatibility with Windows 10.

                        

Dropbox continued to synchronize files as normal when run as a windows service:

Dropbox running as a service on Windows 10

And Google Drive operated flawlessly as well:

Google Drive running as a service on Windows 10

The end result is that AlwaysUp 9.1 is fully compatible with Windows 10!

The only trouble we noticed was when interacting with applications running in Session 0…

The Keyboard and Mouse didn’t work in Session 0

We were able to switch to the isolated Session 0 but couldn’t interact with the application running there. The mouse cursor vanished and the keyboard was unresponsive. We couldn’t even click the “Return now” button to go back to the normal desktop!


Session 0 with MSINFO32 running - no keyboard or mouse!

Fortunately this bug has already been reported to Microsoft and a resolution may be on the way.

We were unable to see Session 0 when logged in through RDP

The second oddity we encountered was when logged in to our server via RDP. Switching to Session 0, either from the Interactive Services Detection Dialog or from AlwaysUp, resulted in an unhelpful “black screen”. The black screen remained for one minute, until the Session 0 timeout elapsed and we were unceremoniously disconnected from the server. We experienced this with RDP versions 6.2.9200 and 6.3.9600 and our recommended driver updates didn’t resolve the problem. Hopefully Microsoft will fix this one quickly too.

September 19 2015: Switching to Session 0 over RDP is now working on our Windows 10 machines! We think that the cumulative update for Windows 10 issued on September 8 (KB3081455) may have done the trick so please apply that update if you are still having trouble.

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