FireDaemon
www.firedaemon.com
“FireDaemon is a utility that allows you to
install and run virtually any native Win32 application or script (eg. BAT/CMD,
Perl, Java, Python) as a Windows NT/2K/XP service. FireDaemon features easy
configuration (via GUI or XML), a low memory/CPU overhead, subprocess
prioritisation, custom environments and CPU binding and scheduling plus
monitoring and logging to the NT/2K/XP event log and on-disk log files.
FireDaemon is supplied in two forms: a free Lite
version (with limited functionality for non-commercial use) and a fully
functional Pro version.”
FREEping
www.tools4nt.com/Products/fp/description.htm
“Do
you want to know if all your Windows .NET/XP/2000/NT servers are alive and
pinging? Do you want to receive a pop-up message when one of them is not running
anymore? Start using FREEping. It's all in the name: FREEping is a free ping
utility which will ping all your .NET/XP/2000/NT servers (or any other IP
address) in free-definable intervals. FREEping will send you a popup when one of
the .NET/XP/2000/NT servers stops responding. Take a look at the FREEping
overview window to view all important statistics.”
I
am now running FREEping as a FireDaemon application to hopefully prevent my dynamic
IP address from changing. It will achieve this by keeping the line ‘active’.
ISP's may disconnect your IP address after a period of inactivity even if you
have a router holding onto the IP address. Although this hasn’t happened
in my case (see step 1) it seems a useful fallback.