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Running as a Windows service If you normally monitor the same set of targets and you *always* want to monitor them (and possibly alert on them), you might want to set up PingPlotter Pro to run as a Windows service (under Windows NT-based systems like Windows 2000 and Windows XP only - not Windows 9x). Once you've done this, PingPlotter will start running when you boot your machine and will keep running - even if you log in as a user and then log out. Creating a workspace Start out by creating a "workspace" of targets you'd like to normally trace. To do this, use PingPlotter Pro to trace to the targets you want to monitor, setting up your Trace Interval, engine settings, etc. Then, use the Workspace -> Save Workspace menu option to save these settings into a workspace file. This workspace records all the destinations, trace interval, window positions time-graph interval and a variety of other settings. What it does not save is the actual engine parameters. Instead, it saves the name of the configuration you're using, and then uses the current setting for that named configuration. Installing PingPlotter Pro as a service. To set up PingPlotter to run as a service, the easiest way to do this is via the Options dialog. Go to the "Windows Service" portion and hit the "Install Service" button. This will create a service entry pointing at PingPlotter. Note that this happens outside of the context of the installer / uninstaller for PingPlotter Pro, so you need to remember to Remove PingPlotter Pro from the list of services using this same method before you uninstall it. If the "Install Service" button is disabled, that means that PingPlotter is already installed as a service. Starting PingPlotter Pro as a service The remaining steps are best done when PingPlotter Pro is running as a service, to ensure user rights are properly configured. There are a few ways to start PingPlotter Pro as a service. Note that just *running* PingPlotter Pro does not start it as a service. These will all get you to the same place. Option 1: Reboot your computer. Option 2: Open the "Services" control panel applet, find "PingPlotter", and start the service. Option 3: Open a command prompt and type the following (hit "Enter" when done): At this point, PingPlotter Pro should be running. When running as a service, PingPlotter Pro starts in the system tray and is minimized. Configuring the service options There are a few options that should be set to make running as a service as easy as possible. For more details on these options, see the help topic that covers this. In "Workspace to load", browse to the .pws file you created earlier (or type in the path here). Note that this should be an absolute path - with a drive letter. It should not point to a network share or a mapped drive letter, as these might not be valid when the computer first boots. If you turn on the option to "Automatically update workspace on shutdown / reboot", then any changes made to the list of targets while running will automatically be written back to the workspace file so the next reboot will match that. Another important setting is "Save File Location". This is where PingPlotter Pro writes collected data. This must have read-write access to the System user, and should be an absolute path as well. You can leave it blank to use the PingPlotter install directory, but this is not as reliable as specifying a fixed location (example c:\ppdata\service files). When is data saved? Most people run PingPlotter Pro as a service when they are collecting data full-time. At a minimum, you want PingPlotter Pro to save your collected data when you shut down, and reload it when you restart. This is how PingPlotter Pro works, and the "Save File Location" is where these data files are stored. But what if you lose power to your computer, or your computer crashes for some reason. Do you lose all your data? In an attempt to make this less risky, the PingPlotter service configuration automatically makes a duplicate copy every time you auto-save your data. So if you set up a 30 minute auto-save interval, then the most data you'll lose is 30 minutes, if the computer crashes. You'll probably want to set a maximum memory size in your auto-save configuration as well - so you don't exhaust your computers memory after a few weeks of collecting data. We discuss some best practices for this in our knowledge base. General Caveats There are some challenges and shortcomings that come when PingPlotter Pro is running as a service. Most of these problems come from the fact that you're using a piece of software that is running as the System user, but you're interacting with a desktop that is *not* the system user (but, instead, your own user account).
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