FYI - no help needed. This post is just to help out others.

I had a situation where I was running FM 12 Advanced with RemoteScripter on a Windows 2008 Server. RemoteScripter requires a "robot" file running on FileMaker Pro Client (not server) that can handle the run script requests from IWP clients or web pages via URL.

Running the client on the server was the only viable solution for my client. The problem was, what happens if the server restarts unexpectedly or if you have it restarting routinely after installing patches? The FileMaker client "robot" needs to be running for RemoteScripter to function, so I needed to find a way to start the client and the database automatically.

Here's how to do it.

First, make a windows shortcut file to open your database from the desktop (see here for more info). Here's an example:

fmp://AcountName:Password@IPAddress/MyDatabase.fmp12

Copy that line into a web browser and click on the little icon to left of the address and drag it to the desktop (again, see here for more info). Double click the icon to make sure it opens the file.

Next, move that shortcut to the following folder:

C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

Now when you login into your server, your database will start.

Finally, set up your windows server to auto login on startup - click here to learn how to do that. It's not hard.

That's it - when your server restarts, windows will login and your database starts automatically.

One note of warning - if anyone has access to your physical machine, they will be logged on automatically on startup or restart. My machine was in the cloud, so that was not a problem. I also tried to remote desktop into it with just the ip number, but needed the user name and password to do that successfully. Consider the security implications before implementing this solution.

Enjoy!

Don Clark

FM Database Consulting

Very cool info! Thanks for posting Don!