FireDaemon is a great program to run scripts and programs as a Windows Service so that you don't have to logon the host and start them manually. It's particularly useful over the basic Windows Task Scheduler in that it will gather standard output from the script you're running so you can debug your scripts much easier. I'll walk through an example of configuring a service to run a script such as a simple .BAT file that will start encoding an audio stream.

Requirements:

• Windows NT, 2000, 2003, XP
• FireDaemon Service Manager Download

Setup:

1. Purchase, download, and install FireDaemon (of course).
2. Click the SERVICE menu and select NEW.
3. Under “Short Name” enter a name for the service using few alphanumeric characters without any spaces.
4. When you move to the “Display Name” field, the “Short Name” will copy over. You can change this to be more descriptive.
5. Enter information in the “Description” field if you want
6. Usually you will want to check the box “Console Application” Do this especially if your script typically outputs any kind of information to the screen.
7. Click the ellipse button next to the “Executable” box and navigate to the script or program you wish to execute. The “Working Directory” should fill in automatically.
8. If there are any command line parameters that you would normally type in when running the script, enter them under “Parameters”
9. For the most part you can leave “Start-up Time” set to the default of 3 seconds.
   
   
   
10. Click on the “Settings” tab.
11. Enter a username and password where appropriate if this program will need to access files available only to administrators or certain users.
12. Again if the program writes any output, click the “Interact with Desktop” check box.
13. Edit the “Service Lifecycle” if necessary. The defaults are usually ok.
    
    
    
14. Under the advanced tab you can capture the output of your script or program by entering a file name under the “Output Capture” section.
    
    
    
15. Work through the other tabs if necessary and then configure a schedule for restarting the script if necessary.
    
    
    
16. Click Install and you're good to go!