using PHP to run third party program (IIS)

[FATO]

Hi all, I'm new to PHP and to this forum too.

I got a problem regarding to the subject title by using exec() / system() and other forms of program execution listed on the official PHP website. I hope that anyone who got similar experience or solution can reply to this topic.

The target application is a .BAT file. For example, The .BAT file is used to open notepad.exe. It works when I double click the notepad.BAT. However, it wont work when I use exec(notepad.BAT); in my PHP code. The browser hanged without any response and when I open up the task manager the notepad.exe is somehow running in the background.

Thanks in advance to those who read and reply.

[Horizon88]

The reason it hangs is because PHP is waiting for the task it spawns to finish. There are some ways around this, but I've never done it under windows, only Linux. You could possibly try a two-script solution - use PHP to hook a batch script that launches the real script - then PHP would wait for the first script to return, but not the second. You'll have to tinker with it though.

[FATO]

Thanks for the reply, I'll consider your way of doing it. But still this thread is open for alternative solutions. Anymore replies will be appreciated. Thank you.

[FATO]

I've tried Apache and did the following:

go start->control panel->administrative tools->services

then set the Apache 2 to log on as my account. It works.

But when I try to do the same on IIS, the IIS service itself failed to restart. Any ideas?