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.
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Hot shit dude, that’s a really nice and useful program!
It is very difficult to start a program from a Windows service due to Vista+ security. I can stop and close anything, but after updating I need to restart the program. This will do it easily so is a solution.
Thanks a lot for the great program, really usefull for me.
A couple of nags :
Where is the log file stored ? and can it be deleted
Can the program also get a wait timer in the autostart mode, so the program has a chanche to start up af a win reboot ?
The log is only stored in-memory, so it will be automatically deleted when the program exits.
I’ll see if I can add a wait timer for windows startup later (I’m currently away from my dev. tools). Alternatively, you could disable the normal autorun for the program(s) in question and just let RestartOnCrash start them on reboot.
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This is great! I use it.. it is simple and works very well.
Onlye have one problem :(… Known Issues nr. 2 – System tray icon.
Best regards
FYI Bug – when minimized to the system tray after awhile (uncertain how long), then opening the app back up (maximizing it) the toolbar buttons are missing. The only way to get them back is to restart the app. Occurring on XP Pro SP3.
That’s actually what I was referring to in Known Issue #2 (though I didn’t know it also happens if you just keep it minimized). It’s a bug in one of the component libraries; I’ve no idea how to fix it.
This is brilliant! I absolutely love how you’ve created this to not just try and relaunch a crashed app… but instead providing a command line to say what to do after it’s crashed. I can add command line strings to my .exes (to relaunch them the way I need them launched) or direct the path to a batch file and perform other operations before the relaunch. Fantastic!!! Thanks so much for all the hard work you put into this and making it freeware. It’s a real gem.
Nice program. Sure could use a time “date” stamp on the logs though.. instead of just a time stamp. OK.. I know my program crashed at 2pm… but when????
I have this monitoring a process on a server machine of ours, and this program needs to accept command line arguments. RoC won’t run this, it just treats it like it can’t run.
Weird, but eh. It’s a really nice idea.
Put the command with arguments in a batch file and have RoC run that?
Exactly.. I have it pointed to a batch file to restart a service because I’m having it write to a time-date stamp log too (to get around the issue above of not dating it), but..
I also have it monitoring 2 .exes, both of which accept command-line arguments, and it works just fine, without putting the commands in a batch file. I think you have your command line arguments setup wrong.
I should also add that on a 2008 server I monitor, I had to put the same commands in a batch file to restart my service, and run the batch file as Administrator.. because 2008 requires that.
Right. I’ll keep your feedback in mind for when I might get around to updating this application.
Excellent Program!! If you have anymore cool programs like this, please let me know 😛
I have been looking for a, user-friendly, program like this for AGES – So simple yet so effective!
Excellent work!
I would also like to know if you have any other programs as sweet as RoC?
I have a couple of random utilities, I think (see the top menu on this page), but I’ve mostly been making WP plugins these days.