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+# Serving as a Standalone Server on Windows
+
+On Windows, this method works more or less identically to how it’s
+documented in [the generic instructions](../any/none.md).
+
+...but only while `fossil.exe` is actually running, which is the source
+of much trouble on Windows. This problem has two halves:
+
+
+## No App Startup Without Desktop
+
+The easy methods for starting a program in Windows at system start all
+require an interactive desktop.  There is no *easy* way to start an arbitrary
+program on Windows at boot before anyone has logged in. In Unix
+terms, Windows has no simple equivalent to [the `/etc/rc.local` file][rcl].
+
+You can partially get around the first problem by setting your `fossil
+server` call up as one of the user’s interactive startup items. Windows
+10 has its own [idiosyncratic way of doing this][si10], and in older
+systems you have [several alternatives to this][si7]. Regardless of the
+actual mechanism, these will cause the Fossil standalone HTTP server to
+start on an *interactive desktop login* only. While you’re sitting at
+the Windows login screen, the Fossil server is *down*.
+
+[rcl]:  http://nixdoc.net/man-pages/FreeBSD/man8/rc.local.8.html
+[si10]: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2944-add-delete-enable-disable-startup-items-windows-10-a.html
+[si7]:  https://www.wikihow.com/Change-Startup-Programs-in-Windows-7
+
+
+
+## No Simple Background Mode
+
+Windows also lacks a direct equivalent of the Bourne shell’s “`&`” control operator to
+run a program in the background, which you can give in Unix’s `rc.local`
+file, which is just a normal Bourne shell script.
+
+By “background,” I mean
+“not attached to any interactive user’s login session.” When the
+`rc.local` script exits in Unix, any program it backgrounded *stays
+running*. There is no simple and direct equivalent to this mechanism in
+Windows.
+
+If you set `fossil server` to run on interactive login, as above, it
+will shut right back down again when that user logs back out.
+
+With Windows 10, it’s especially problematic because you can no longer
+make the OS put off updates arbitrarily: your Fossil server will go down
+every time Windows Update decides it needs to reboot your computer, and
+then Fossil service will *stay* down until someone logs back into that
+machine interactively.
+
+
+## Better Solutions
+
+Because of these problems, we only recommend setting `fossil server` up
+on Windows this way when
+you’re a solo developer or you work in a small office where everyone
+arrives more or less at the same time each day, and everyone goes home
+about the same time each day, so that one user can keep the Fossil
+server up through the working day.
+
+If your needs go at all beyond this, you should expect proper “server”
+behavior, which you can get on Windows by [registering Fossil as a
+Windows service](./service.md), which solves the interactive startup and
+shutdown problems above, at a bit of complexity over the Startup Items
+method. You may also want to consider putting that service behind [an
+IIS front-end proxy](./iis.md) to add additional web serving features.
+
+*[Return to the top-level Fossil server article.](../)*