Allow ShipStation Connect to run as a Windows Service

[reefnet]

I have ShipStation Connect installed on one PC in our office in order for all our other PCs to have access to a few printers. This works fine as long as my Windows user account is logged in (so ShipStation Connect starts up). However as soon as I log out, or if the computer must be rebooted and I'm not around to sign in to my account....ShipStation Connect never runs and nobody can access the printers. It should be possible to setup ShipStation Connect to run as a Windows Service instead, so that it starts with Windows, and not on a specific user logon. As it stands, ShipStation Connect is fatally flawed for anyone who cannot be present to log in after a system reboots! Hoping for a solution...

[Dale5]

Hi All,

@HHE @Webmenace 

I have found a way to run shipstation connect on any pc without being logged in! I am currently doing this with our team without fault!
I am using PsExec (which is a MicroSoft tool) to run the process on the SBS via command prompt and once the process is running you can close the command prompt. This works well for me as I am running ShipStation connect on a server that does not get rebooted very often. (You will be running ShipsStation Connect as the native SYSTEM account, this is why you do not need to stay logged in or keep a disconnected session).

download PsExec on your remote PC (i did this on my laptop). Just google it and click on the link from Microsoft.
extract the ZIP to the C: drive of the same PC

Open cmd as admin
navigate to the PSTools folder via 'cd' ex: 'cd C:\Users\admin\pstools' (without the ' at the start and end)

Enter this command, change it to suit your environment.

psexec <servername> -u <username> -p <password> -s "C:\Program Files\ShipStation Connect\ShipStation Connect.exe"

example: psexec \\192.168.xxx.xxx -u admin -p ******* -s "C:\Program Files\ShipStation Connect\ShipStation Connect.exe"

**i believe that is the default location for the shipstation connect .exe file. if not, change the UNC path accordingly.

If you have entered this successfully, you will see the terminal do a whole bunch of stuff. Once it has stopped you will see the current version of shipstation connect in the terminal. You can close the terminal now.

Log into shipstation and reselect the printers that you want the users to print from.