ProcGuard

A persistent, configuration-driven process manager for Windows. It ensures a list of specified applications are always running. If a monitored process is not found, ProcGuard will automatically launch it.

It is written in AutoHotkey.

Features

• Persistent Process Monitoring: Runs silently in the background to ensure your essential applications are always active.
• Configuration-Driven: Manage which applications to monitor and how often using a simple .conf file.
• Flexible Launch Commands: For each process, you can specify a simple executable name or a full command with a path and arguments.
• Live Configuration Reload: Automatically reloads the configuration file, allowing you to change settings without restarting the script.
• Optional Logging: Create an empty procguard.log file in the same directory to enable detailed logging of the script's actions.
• Normal or Reverse Mode: For each entry, choose whether to run the command when the process is missing (default) or when it is present (reverse mode).

Usage

There are no command-line arguments for now. All configuration is handled by the procguard.conf file.

1. Configure: Create and edit the procguard.conf file in the same directory as procguard.ahk.
2. Run: Simply execute procguard.ahk. It will run silently in the background.

Configuration (procguard.conf)

Create a text file named procguard.conf in the same directory as the executable. The script will not run without it.

• Each line represents one process to monitor.
• Lines starting with # are ignored as comments.

Format

The format for each line is a comma-separated list:

ProcessName.exe,PathToExecutable [with arguments],IntervalSeconds[,Mode]

• ProcessName.exe: The name of the process to check for (e.g., notepad.exe).
• PathToExecutable [with arguments]: The full command to run based on the chosen mode. This can include a full path and any command-line arguments.
• IntervalSeconds: The number of seconds to wait between checks for this specific process.
• Mode (optional): Controls when the command is executed. Supported values:
  • (omitted) or any value other than reverse: normal mode – run the command when the process is not running.
  • reverse: reverse mode – run the command when the process is running.

Example procguard.conf

# =======
# Follow the format below to set the configuration
# Executable binary name to be checked, path to the exe to be started, interval (seconds), optional mode
# Mode:
#   (omitted or anything except "reverse") → run when process is NOT running
#   "reverse" → run when process IS running
# =======

# Ensure GoldenDict is running, check every 10 minutes (600 seconds)
# Normal mode (default): if GoldenDict.exe is missing, start it
GoldenDict.exe,C:\Path\to\GoldenDict\GoldenDict.exe,600

# Ensure Listary is running, check every 10 minutes
Listary.exe,C:\Path\to\ListaryPortable\Listary.exe,600

# Run a command with arguments, check every 4 hours (14400 seconds)
WeaselDeployer.exe,C:\Path\to\RimeIMEPortable\weasel\WeaselDeployer.exe /sync,14400

# Keep a simple background utility active, check every minute
CoffeeBean.exe,C:\Path\to\CoffeeBean.exe,60

# Reversed behavior
# When Everything.exe IS running, execute the command every 10 minutes
Everything.exe,C:\Path\to\Everything.exe -reindex -startup,3600,reverse

Building from Source

To compile the procguard.ahk script into procguard.exe, you will need the AutoHotkey compiler (Ahk2Exe), which is included with the standard AutoHotkey v1.1 installation.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.