Automatically Restart Crashed Or Hanged Applications
Don’t you hate it when programs hang or crash? I find it especially annoying when a background application like an IM client or a bandwidth monitor silently crashes – sometimes I only notice the problem hours later when I’ve already missed a bunch of messages. I’m sure you’ve encountered a few “Not responding” errors and some irritatingly crash-prone applications yourself.
If you have an unstable program that you absolutely need to run at all times, but don’t want to waste your time monitoring and manually restarting it every time it croaks, I might have something interesting for you.
Restart on Crash is an monitoring tool that will watch the applications that you specify and automatically relaunch any program that hangs or crashes. You can add any number of applications to monitor, enable/disable them individually and edit the command line that will be used to restart an application.
Restart on Crash doesn’t require installation and stores all it’s configuration data in a “settings.ini” file in the program’s folder, so it’s portable. It should be compatible with most NT-based Windows versions.
Download Restart on Crash (1.4 MB)
Screenshots & Documentation
The main window
- To add a new application to monitor, click the “Add” button or press the Ins key.
- To delete on or more applications from the list, select them and click “Delete” or press Del.
- To edit the per-application configuration, double-click the corresponding row. This will open the editing dialog (see below).
- You can also access the RoC configuration by clicking “Settings” and view the activity log by clicking “Show Log”. The log contains information about crashed/hanged applications, executed commands, and so on.
Editing the monitor settings for an application
Well, this one should be pretty self-explanatory 🙂 One detail to keep in mind is that enabling the “It isn’t running” option will make Restart On Crash treat the application as if it has crashed even if you have purposefully it closed it. You can get around this by disabling the monitoring of the application before you close it.
The configuration dialog. Yes, that’s it.
“Grace period” is how long Restart on Crash will wait before trying to terminate/restart an application that it has just terminated/restarted. This is intended to prevent a scenario where RoC kills a hanged program, restarts it, decides it has hanged again (e.g. if the program is non-responsive while starting up) and wrongfully terminates it again.
Known Issues
- If you configure RoC to automatically kill a hanged application, it will terminate all instances of that application when doing so. This may be fixed eventually.
Release Notes
2022-11-02
- The “execute a command” feature can now launch shortcuts (.lnk files). Potentially, it can now run almost any type of file as long as file associations are set up correctly.
2019-12-17
- Improved “application is not responding” detection.
- Added a “Clear Log” button to the Log window.
2019-08-24
- Added a “Restart Now” option to the application pop-up menu. It restarts the selected application immediately without waiting for the grace period to expire.
Subscribe via RSS
Get Updates by Email
Can you put some code on a timer to check if both “settings.ini” exists and application list is not blank ? Thanks
I could check for settings.ini, but I have a strong suspicion that the application list problem is actually a bug in a third-party component and that it would report “everything is fine” even when it’s blank.
When application list become blank RestartOnCrash stop working so maybe you can check this or use a different component for the list.
Using Windows 8. Option to start with Windows minimized is not working.
What is the command line (creating a task to start the program) to start minimized?
Thanks for a great program.
@ Riccardo:
Okay, I’ve replaced some third-party components with stock alternatives. I don’t know if it’ll help, but feel free to give it a try:
RestartOnCrash-v1.3.2.zip
@ George:
Sorry, I still don’t have a Windows 8 machine to test it with.
Normally you can start RoC minimized by adding the “/hide” argument to the command line.
i have a work around. I disabled (un-checked) the Run When Windows Starts and Start Minimized in Settings.
I then created a Task to start the program and used the /hide option.
It now starts minimized when Windows 8 boots.
I’m using it to restart a problematic Corsair LINK program which controls my CPU cooling and fans. Corsair LINK “Stops Responding” occasionally, and it’s pretty critical that it restart if I’m not at the computer.
Working GREAT! Thanks
RodeoGeorge
I’ll try it soon, thanks 🙂
@Janis I’ve tried version 1.3.2 and this time we have a msgbox with the error: http://s22.postimg.org/cz9xzccg1/rocnew.jpg
Well, that’s something. I’ll see if I can add better crash reporting. If we can get a stack trace for that error, I might actually be able to fix it.
Try this version:
RestartOnCrash-v1.3.2.159.zip
If you get an error message with an option to send a bug report, do it.
Ok, thanks !
Anyone knows how run it in hiden mode, i mean without any icon minimized?
That is not currently possibly, though I guess there are probably third-party tools that can hide systray icons.
Thanks anyway Janis, your tool is excellent !!!
@Janis 3 days without crash 🙂 keep running !
Great tool, many thanks!
I have already been browsing on-line more than 3 time today, still Irrrve never found any kind of intriguing article like your own property. It really is very truly worth plenty of to me. Personally, if almost all website masters and bloggers made superb articles as you does, the internet might be additional beneficial than in the past.
hello, you can do that by pressing the X the program pass tray icon
Thank you! The kill/restart option when program hangs is of incredible value for me (using it as restarter for ispy video security app).
Hello, has anyone found a way to avoid the ‘elevation’ requirement in Windows 7?
For example I attempt to restart an .EXE and get CreateProcess error : The requested operation requires elevation