Pegasus Mail & Mercury

As of this writing, Mercury/32 (currently v3.21c) does not directly provide an option for running as a service. However, you can use the MS SRVANY utility from the Windows NT Resource Kit (ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/reskit/nt40/) in order to make Mercury/32 run as an NT Service. Here is a summary of the steps:

1. Obtain a copy of SRVANY.EXE and its supporting files and copy SRVANY.EXE to the WinNT SYSTEM32 sub-directory (for this discussion, we'll assume that directory is c:\winnt\system32).
    
2. Type: INSTSRV Mercury32 c:\winnt\system32\srvany.exe
   This step adds a service called Mercury32, which will use the srvany utility to control the Mercury/32 application program.
   There is also a GUI version of INSTSRV (called SRVINSTW.exe) which will walk you through the above step, if you prefer.
    
3. Run the registry editor (Regedit.exe) and add a "Parameters" key to the Mercury32 service under the following location:
   HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services\Mercury32
   Within this new key (HKLM\System\Current Control Set\Services\Mercury32\Parameters), add a value of type REG_SZ called "Application".
   The value of this string should be the full path to the Mercury.exe application.
   ie: "d:\mercury\mercury.exe"
    
4. Open the Services icon within the Windows Control Panel and check the "Allow interact with desktop" checkbox for the Mercury32 service, then try starting it.
    

The above procedure is documented in the SRVANY.WRI file if the above instructions are not clear enough.

WARNING! Mercury/32 only saves it's settings when you close the Mercury/32 application. If Mercury/32 crashes or the PC crashes, any changes you made to Mercury/32 since you last started it will not have been saved.

Keeping the above warning in mind and the fact that Mercury/32 is not a true service, you should never shut down Mercury/32 by just stopping the Mercury/32 service from within the Services control panel applet. If you need to shut down the Mercury/32 service, you should first close Mercury/32's own application window (File -> Exit menu option) before shutting down the Mercury/32 service entry within the Services control panel applet. You can then start Mercury/32 again from the Services control panel applet, if you wish.

Some sites have also reported success using FireDaemon for WinNT/2K/XP (http://www.firedaemon.com/) to run Mercury/32 as a service under WinNT/2K/XP.