AlwaysUp 11.8

The best way to force a certain app or program to remain active all the time, and to start up immediately after, say, an accidental shutdown, is to make it behave as a Windows service. AlwaysUp is a small utility that turns your most sensitive programs and routines into tireless processes that start automatically as soon as your computer is idle again and remain active without any human intervention.

Turning an application, batch file, or shortcut into a Windows service is pretty simple. All you have to do is add it to the list. AlwaysUp opens a tabbed dialog where you can configure the way you want the program to manage a specific process or app, so that you can forget about it. Here is where things can get a little tricky, as not all applications behave in the same way. You can define when the program should start and where, as well as to determine its priority against other running apps. You may also decide to monitor your running apps and determine what to do if your system “hangs”, if the memory usage goes beyond a certain threshold, if it hogs the CPU, if your PC resumes from sleep or hibernation, etc.

The options and variables are manifold, which means that in order to make a program run 24/7 using AlwaysUp without any hiccups, you’ll need not only to familiarize with the many possibilities that the program offers, but also to know how Windows services work, and how your apps were installed and set up in terms of user permissions, drivers, network configuration, etc., and to match those settings with the options provided by AlwaysUp. It is crucial that you learn how to use the program correctly to achieve the expected results. Actually, the list of possible errors and malfunctions that you may encounter when adding a new app to the list is not negligible.

If you happen to master AlwaysUp and configure each of your apps and processes correctly, you will not need to worry about your running apps anymore. You can forget about log-ons and log-offs, PC crashes and reboots (intentional or not), “Application error” messages, etc., even if you’re working on a network.