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Service Protector Version History / Release Notes |
We're dedicated to keeping Service Protector up to date by constantly adding features, fixing bugs,
and supporting the latest Windows releases.
Take a look at our past updates to see our ongoing commitment to continuous improvement
Version 11
11.5.2.43 (April 4 2026) 
New features
- New sanity check: Restart the service if a supporting service isn't running.
- Extended the "network connections" sanity check to examine the entire
process tree and succeed if a sub-process has network connections.
- Extended the "resource handle count" sanity check to examine the entire
process tree and fail if a sub-process is using too many handles.
Fixes & Improvements
- Reduced permissions required for several API operations.
- Revoke registrations online.
- Improved support for group Managed Service Accounts (gMSA).
- To facilitate troubleshooting, mention the serial number when a registration code is not accepted.
- To run more smoothly on Windows Secure Host Baseline (SHB), rearchitected internal components to avoid conflicts related to
Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and similar process mitigation technologies.
11.0.4.37 (October 25 2025)
New features
- New sanity check: Restart your application if it uses too many handles.
- Set the "Start Service Timeout": the duration that Windows waits for a service to start before failing with an error.
- Added online registration.
Fixes & Improvements
- To facilitate troubleshooting, mention the serial number when a registration code is not accepted.
- Fixed a problem where the service's description could be truncated in the registry.
- Improved guidance when upgrading and a new version is installed that doesn't comply with the upgrade policy.
Version 10
10.5.1.94 (December 20 2024)
New features
- New sanity check: Restart the service if one or more critical events are written to a Windows Event Log.
- Added support for sorting protectors/services in the main window.
Fixes & Improvements
- Improved efficiency when processing records from the Windows Event Logs.
- When a sanity check fails, write its transcript to the Event Log (to facilitate troubleshooting).
- Fixed a problem searching the event logs for a specific, non-standard ID.
- Additional improvements for Windows Server 2025.
10.0.6.29 (May 10 2024)
New features
- New sanity check: Restart the service if a given drive letter isn't mapped/available.
- The web server sanity check now accepts a timeout parameter, to indicate how long to wait for a response from the server
before failing the request.
- When configuring the TCP/IP network connections sanity check, you can test it on the selected service.
Fixes & Improvements
- Show the HTTP response and/or headers when manually running the web server sanity check.
- The web server sanity check now treats HTTP status codes 1XX and 3XX as success. Only status codes 4XX and 5XX are treated as errors.
- Launch the sanity check on the interactive desktop, to satisfy programs like "cscript.exe" that won't run on a non-interactive desktop.
- The text and icons on the taskbar tray menu have been enlarged, to improve readability.
- Support for Windows Server 2025.
- Dropped the SHA-1 digital signature. Executables are digitally signed with SHA-256.
Version 9
9.5.2.83 (November 3 2023)
New features
- New sanity check: Verify TCP/IP network connections.
- Full support for monitoring "Automatic (Delayed Start)" services.
Fixes & Improvements
- Improved efficiency when checking the status of a service.
- Augmented internal logging throughout the program, to provide better feedback when troubleshooting thorny customer issues.
- Enhanced coordination with Windows when a system shutdown has been initiated, to eliminate unnecesary restarts.
- When waiting, show the wait time in the "protected" tooltip.
- Implemented a slight performance boost when reading Windows Event log records.
- Detect and handle the situation when Service Protector is waiting to restart the service but it gets started by another process.
- Updated the icons on the "Tools" menu to match those on Windows 11/10.
9.0.4.72 (April 7 2023)
New features
- Introduced support for importing protectors from multiple files at once.
Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed an issue with the registration window on high-res, 4K screens.
- Added the ability to remove the registration code, to return Service Protector to the unregistered state.
- Improved the handling of non-English text when sending mail and reporting activity.
- The version licensed is now mentioned in the "About" window.
- The program now logs a line when a protector is started at boot.
Version 8
8.5.3.61 (October 14 2022)
New features
- Introduced a sanity check to detect when an important application isn't running.
- Added support for date variables in the file-updated sanity check.
Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed a crash when testing a custom sanity check.
- Improved logging when running a sanity check.
- Reduced CPU load when scanning for crash dialogs.
- Support for Windows 10 22H2.
- Support for Windows 11 22H2.
8.1.3.70 (April 2 2022)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Automatically enable the service if it's disabled.
- Full support for Windows Server 2022.
8.0.8.62 (November 19 2021)
New features
- Introduced a flexible framework for sanity checks that are able to detect when a running service is not
functioning as required (and subsequently restarting it).
- Added a sanity check to test basic TCP/IP network connectivity.
- Added a sanity check to test if a web server is responding properly.
- Added a sanity check to test if a file is being updated regularly.
- Added a sanity check that runs your own custom program/script.
- Full support for Windows 11.
Fixes & Improvements
- Improved internal logging on Windows 11.
- Added code to tolerate systems that apply timezone settings late, a few seconds after boot.
- Special handling for "splwow64.exe" processes, which may not exit properly following the completion of a print job.
Version 7
7.0.5.29 (February 13 2021)
New features
- Alert emails now include the most recent activity from the Windows Event Logs.
- The first sanity check can now be delayed to avoid conflicts when the service starts.
Fixes & Improvements
- Improved performance when loading 50+ services.
- Improved performance when loading 1000+ records from the Windows event logs.
- Bug fixes for internal TCP/IP networking components.
- Minor adjustments for Windows 10 October 2020 (20H2).
- Several improvements to the registration windows.
- Added the Help > FAQ menu, linking to popular FAQ entries.
- Minor tweaks for Windows Server 2019 and Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 19577.
- Increased the "Additional info" field in emails from 30 to 60 characters.
- Link to our website when configuring the sanity check feature, email.
Version 6
6.5.3.71 (October 18 2019)
New features
- Added the ability to restart the service when the PC resumes fom a sleep/hibernation/low-power event.
Fixes & Improvements
- Single-CPU percent is now properly reported.
- Present additional information on the registration windows.
- Mention when the 30-day trial expires in the main window's title.
6.0.7.48 (February 22 2019)
New features
- Added the "Restart Protector" button to the toolbar.
- Disable switching to Session 0 on versions of Windows where Session 0
is no longer accessible (currently Windows 10 Version 1803 and later).
Fixes & Improvements
- Improved support for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016.
- Technical enhancements for Windows Server 2019.
- Boosted performance when reading from the Windows Event log.
- Added a workaround for a problem when licensing on Windows 10 SHB.
- Design improvements to the registration windows, process.
Version 5
5.6.0.19 (October 27 2017)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Don't attempt to restart the service when a system shutdown is in progress.
5.5.0.38 (August 24 2017)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Added a workaround for a problem when licensing on Windows 10 SHB.
- Fixed a bug on Windows 10 SHB where the main window becomes disabled.
- Improved logging for troubleshooting startup.
5.3.0.87 (October 30 2016)
New features
- CPU hog detection now supports windows services that use all CPUs.
Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed a bug when dismissing Windows popups.
5.0.8.43 (April 9 2016)
New features
- Added the option of starting protection immediately after adding a new Protector. The default is "on".
Fixes & Improvements
- Executable components are now signed with a SHA-256 certificate.
- Minor improvements to a few windows in the purchase process.
- Resolved a registry permission issue that occasionally occurred when registering the software.
- Removed HTML centering from email messages, to avoid poor formatting when viewed in Gmail.
- Show sanity check error codes in the range of -10 to -1 as negative.
- Events from the System log now show up on activity reports.
- Added links to tutorials under the Help menu.
- Tweaks for supporting Windows 10 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
Version 4
4.5.3.68 (September 6 2014)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Mail servers actually called "mail" weren't being recorded properly.
- Re-enabled the Desktop Security Settings entry in the Tools menu.
- Removed Local Security Settings from the Tools menu when Windows does not provide that functionality.
- Fixed a bug with the expansion of special sanity check command line variables.
- Improved the log messages for CPU hogs.
- Improved memory tracking.
- Dates and times were inconsistently formatted on non-English localizations.
These have all been normalized to the English locale, to be consistent with the rest of the program.
- Fixed a problem sending reports at midnight when a scheduled restart was configured at the same time.
4.0.6.39 (March 16 2013)
New features
- Identify and resolve service executables that remain alive after they have informed the Windows Service Control Manager that they have stopped.
- When stopping a service, wait for at least a minute before forcibly terminating the service's executable. The wait time is configurable.
- Multiple scheduled stops are now supported - daily or on specific days of the week.
Fixes & Improvements
- Fixed a bug when activating the main window and a warning was showing.
- Improved licensing on virtual machines (Azure, EC2).
- Registration would sometimes fail on PCs where there is no "C:" drive.
Version 3
3.7.2.16 (February 15 2012)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Fix for failing to protect some services (double quoting the command line).
3.7.1.28 (February 12 2012)
New features
- Added the ability to run a command when the service stops.
Fixes & Improvements
- Fix for the inability to read icons from some services.
3.5.0.91 (January 1 2012)
New features
- Added the capability to define the threshold for a CPU hog.
- Allow Protectors to be imported and exported from the command line.
Fixes & Improvements
- Cap the number of emails sent every 6 and 12 hours to avoid flooding.
- Improved a few error messages.
3.1.1.87 (November 23 2011)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Removing the underlying service would prevent Service Protector from starting properly.
3.0.5.79 (November 15 2011)
New features
- Added support for sending email with TLS or STARTTLS encryption (for Office 365).
Fixes & Improvements
- The correct peak memory was not recorded in the activity statistics.
- When the service is started after a delay, no entry was made to the Event Log.
- Restarting at a scheduled time didn't work when Service Protector hadn't started/restarted the service.
- Improved the graceful shutdown of the service when scheduled.
- Improved the handling of services that deliberately leave a process running after they have stopped (e.g. Windows Firewall).
Version 2
2.7.1.34 (June 28 2011)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Improved licensing on virtual machines.
2.6.0.75 (March 24 2011)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Note when a service that takes a while to start transitions to the started/running state.
- Reduced the number of emails sent when a service/application is repeatedly failing.
2.5.9.47 (March 2 2011)
New features
Fixes & Improvements
- Added support for volume licensing.
2.5.9.16 (February 13 2011)
New features
- Can now switch to Session 0 from the Tools menu.
Fixes & Improvements
- Fix for not detecting a hang in Windows Forms applications.
- Fixed a daylight savings time bug with emailed reports.
- Fixed a bug where time zones in email dates could be negative.
- Improved the performance of reading from the Event Logs.
2.0.3.91 (November 27 2010)
New features
- Provide up to 30 days of service history.
Fixes & Improvements
- Application crash dialogs were not always being dismissed.
- The sanity check doesn't accept a .CMD file with variables.
- Trouble licensing on Windows XP.
Version 1
1.4.0.31 (March 27 2010)
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